Chapter 2
It's Waltraud Wagner at my door, the head of wardens in the Radcliffe Lunatic Asylum. Torturing me in the Mush Room pleasures her above all else. "Did you change your mind yet?" she blurts in her horrible German accent, reeking of cigarette smoke and junk food.
"What do you mean?" I tighten my fist around my single tear, squeezing it away.
"You've been unusually obedient for the past six days, confessing your insanity and such." She slaps her prod against her fleshy palm. "It's not like you," she remarks.
"I'm insane, Waltraud. I'm fully aware of it."
"I hardly believe you. How would an insane person know they're insane?" She is testing me. Admitting my insanity doesn't appeal to her. It rids her of reasons to fry me in the Mush Room. "People are kept in asylums because they aren't aware of their insanity. Their ignorance to their insanity endangers society. That's why we lock them away."
"Are you saying insane people who are aware of their insanity don't deserve to be locked away in asylums?" It's a nonsensical argument already.
"Insane people who know they are insane are smart enough to fool society into thinking they aren't," Waltraud replies. I blink twice to the confusing sentence she just said. "Think of Hitler, for an example." She laughs like a heavyweight ogre. Sometimes I think she is a Nazi. I was told she killed her patients in the asylum she worked for in Austria. But when she makes fun of Hitler, I am not sure anymore. "Or, in your case, you're admitting insanity to avoid shock therapy."
A twisty smile curves on my lips. Waltraud isn't that dumb after all. "That's a serious accusation, Waltraud," I say.
"It is an accusation," she retorts. "But it's hard to prove. Who'd believe me when I tell them you're an insane girl believing you're not insane, but pretending you are?"
"Such a mindbend." I almost chuckle. Waltraud's misery is always my pleasure. "Have you ever read Catch-22 by Joseph Heller?" It's a book that tackles this kind of logic. I wonder if Heller was a Lewis Carroll fan.
"I don't have time to read books," Waltraud puffs. "Does it have pictures in it?"
"No, it doesn't," I say. Waltraud probably read Alice in Wonderland and is trying to provoke me. Anything to get me to do something foolish and deserve punishment in the Mush Room.
"What use is a book without pictures?" She snickers behind the door.
"It's a book that describes how something can't be proven until a previous thing is certainly proven. However, the previous thing can't easily be proven either, to put it mildly." I neglect her comment about a book without pictures.
"I don't understand a word you say." She truly doesn't.
"Think of a chicken and an egg. We have no way to know which came first."
"I don't understand that either," she puffs. "I hate chickens." I hear her scratch her head. "But I love eggs."
I wish I could drive her mad myself. Wouldn't it be fun to have her in my cell instead of me?
A scream interrupts our ridiculous conversation all of a sudden. I have been hearing this for a few days now. It's a patient girl pleading to be spared from the Mush Room. It's probably Ogier torturing her. The Mushroomers in the other cells pound on their bars, demanding the pain to end. The screams have tripled since I've stopped being sent to the Mush Room. Waltraud and Ogier have been compensating my absence with too many other patients.
"Why all the torturing?" I ask Waltraud. I'd like to scream in her face and punch her with oversized gloves filled with needles and pins. But the inner—relatively reasonable—voice stops me. If I want to forget about my madness, and if I want to keep avoiding the pain of shock therapy, I'd better keep to myself. When I walk next to a wall, I want people to only notice the wall.
I am not here to save lives. It's not true. Why should I care?
"It's not torture. It's interrogation," Waltraud explains. "A patient escaped the asylum recently while you were locked in here. We are authorized to use shock therapy to get confessions from the patients neighboring his cell."
I jump to my feet and pace to the door, sliding open the small square window to look at her. "Are you saying someone actually escaped the asylum?" I can't hide the excitement.
"You look so happy about it, Alice," Waltraud sneers. "Come on. Show me you're mad. Give me a reason to send you to the Mush Room. You want to exchange places with the poor girl inside?"
My face tightens instantly. I spend my days and nights in my creepy cell, safe from Waltraud's harm—and safer from my own terrible mind. I need to learn to control my urges.
Be reasonable, Alice. Last week was all in your head. You've never been to the Vatican, the Grote Markt in Belgium, or to Westminster Palace in London. If you want proof, it's easy. Think of why the Pillar never sent for you again. Why Fabiola never entered your cell again. Why your sisters and mothers never visited again. It's better not to care about the escapee as well. Even if you escaped, there is no one out there waiting for you outside.
"Play the 'sanity' game all you want," Waltraud says. "Sooner or later, your brain will be mine to fry." She laughs. An exaggerated laugh, the way they portray an evil person's in Disney cartoons. I am really starting to wonder why she isn't locked in a cell, unless she is like Hitler, knowing he's mad and persuading the world otherwise. "Now get ready," she demands.
"For what?" I grimace.
"It's time for your break," she tells me. "You're rewarded for your good behavior: a ten-minute walk in the sun."
Chapter 3
Walled garden, Radcliffe Lunatic Asylum, Oxford
The garden where I am taking my break is guarded with barbed wire and concrete walls, high on all sides. Very reminiscent of maximum-security prisons where they want you electrocuted if you try to escape. The walls are ten feet high; they almost block the skewed sunrays trying to shine through. I need to move to a certain spot and tiptoe to allow the sun on my skin. When I do, my pale skin feels nourished, loved, and spoiled. No wonder my Lily lives next to a crack in a wall. Now she silently dances to the beautiful daylight, as though she worships the sun.
Don't ask me why I bring her along, even when she is sometimes mean to me. I can't explain why I am so attached to her. Like Jack, I consider her family for some reason.
I close my eyes, spread my arms sideways, and inhale all the air I can. The more oxygen into my lungs, the saner I feel.
The earth underneath me is sand, gravel, and boulders. I kick my shoes away and walk barefoot. I wonder if I keep my eyes closed long enough, would my life change for the better when I flick them open again? Will the madness subside? I wish it were that easy.
Maybe that's why people only dream with eyes closed. To open one's eyes is such a dream killer.
I walk barefoot, and in the darkness of my shut eyelids, a vision shapes before me. A colorful vision that looks as if a rainbow has crashed onto it and spilled its paint everywhere, turning the place into a palette of different hues and shades. I see huge mushrooms, funny-looking trees, giant fruits, as well as oversized rabbits and cats. A dormouse. Flying pigeons. A hookah's spiraling smoke. Nonsensical music is playing somewhere nearby. The vision is so beautiful I don't want to open my eyes again.
My feet keep walking. It feels like I have stepped into the transparent bubble of my own vision, leaving the real world behind.