The Innocents

Chapter Ten

I used to be a normal girl.

There wasn't anything extraordinary about me. I lived for reading and music and all things simple and pure.

The thought of slipping into insanity was alluring. If I could find a way to detach and just focus on the strange patterns on the ceiling of the ward, I could pass this year in comfort. No worrying. No useless conversations because nobody would want to talk to me. No thinking. That was the best part of this idea. Not having to care about anything other than eating, sleeping, making sure my bed was neat and my clothes clean and recounting the squares I could find in the entire compound.

Patterns. Everything had a pattern.

I caught onto the routine fairly quickly which was a great attribute of my personality. Breakfast was at eight am which meant you had to be clean and dressed by that time otherwise you wouldn't be able to get a shower until the following morning. After breakfast we would all go to our assigned work duties, which I found suited my personality and my aptitude for neatly folded clothes. If you can't tell that I am slipping some sarcasm in there, I guess that was lost on you.

After lunch at noon, you had free time as well as after dinner at five before lights out of nine. We had a craft room which consisted of finger paints, poster board and various colors of pipe cleaners. Nobody went in there to actually use any of the shit. We weren't six years-old. Mostly, it was used for when you really needed to be alone. That being said, it was almost always occupied.

Now, I am going to tell you something that would be ruled as gossip and frankly, I hate gossip. I'm more the type of person to want to see hard evidence, proof of something. I'm a doubting Thomas, I guess you could say which might be why God and I had such a strained relationship. Especially at that time in my life.

Anyhow, the rumor was that Gladey, the resident bitch, was occupying the craft room sometimes right before lights out with none other than our resident baby-faced drill sergeant, Mr. Miles-To-Go. It was Jo who told me first and seemed to take a little bit of pleasure in it as if it was the greatest secret known to mankind. In here, it might thave well been.

She told me, in her thirteen-year-old way that Gladey was providing what she called, and with a giggle might I add, "mouth hugs" to "Mr. Miles," in "the crafty room," after "suppey." I told her to stop saying suppey as well as crafty and anything she adds a "y" onto and then delved into the first part of her sentence.

"They've been doing it for a few weeks now," Jo told me. "I think I'm the only one that knows."

I knew that Gladey wasn't telling anyone and Miles sure wasn't. I wanted to ask how Jo knew, but I remember her youthful curiosity of sex and figured it out for myself so I promptly told her to stop spying on them and mind her business and she did.

I should have taken my own advice because I found myself thinking about it more and more so I did my doubting Thomas thing and crept to the craft room at about eight forty-five and saw the door slightly ajar. I acted like a breeze and it drifted open just far enough to see exactly what Jo had told me. It wasn't until Gladey, on her knees eyed me with a wicked smile from behind the standing body of Miles that I finally pulled myself away. My eyes felt like they wanted to burn and melt away in their sockets.

That was the day that I tried really hard to not need any sort evidence to believe something, if even in theory.

So, onto something entirely different. They gave drugs sometimes for no particular reason. I had a theory that they were using us as guinea pigs. The idea wasn't farfetched. It had been done centuries before.