Alone, but Free

I walked through the double doors into the well-lit waiting room where many patients and relatives alike had spent countless hours. I approached the reception desk, walked past to the elevators, as they tried to stop me, I boarded and pressed the button for the penthouse on the top floor where the head, and the mastermind behind this conspiracy, lay in wait for me. As I stepped out of the elevator into the darkness that was the entire room. The elevator doors slowly closed and I was left in total, pitch black. I yelled out, but the sound of my voice bounced back at me, as if the wall was only 6 feet in front of me, but that couldn’t be so if this was the penthouse. I felt around for about six minutes and learned that the room I was in was in fact no larger than a hotel bathroom. I slowly came to realize what had happened, in my determination to confront the asylum, I had fallen into a trap and was now caught in a room I could not get out of, there was no button to call the elevator back up. I curled up in the corner of my new home, feeling cold and alone, weeping for my condition, thinking that if I had it to do it all over again, I would do it so much differently.

I woke up on the forest floor below my makeshift hammock near the pond in the park. It was mid-morning and I was beginning to feel the kind of hunger that comes from going many days without food. I contemplated my most recent dream, it was getting harder to tell the difference between what was real and what my mind made up. I was scared of being caught again but I couldn’t go to the police to report the conspiracy I had discovered without actual evidence, what were my choices? Alistair the detective was my only hope, he had actually done cases and proved things, but I hadn’t seen him since I told him to meet me in the park at 8 at night. Where had he gone? Had he been caught? Did they torture him to find out where I was? Were they on their way here now? These questions haunted me as I roamed the woods looking for berries or other edible plants. During my days in the woods, I grew to understand the birds chirps and learned to tell when someone was coming versus when the birds were just singing. This helped me remain invisible from many intruders into my spot in the woods, but the questions I had soon overwhelmed me and I had to find out what was happening in the town.

I emerged from the woods one morning, I’d decided that the radio station was safest and also would be a good place to find out information. It was early in the morning, but the radio station was buzzing with action, it seemed the past few days had been very eventful. They played the broadcast outside the station so that passersby could listen in. I heard the D.J. describe a tale of two murders which, according to the police were unrelated. The first to die was a man named Sile, he had been brutally stabbed to death in his own apartment by a man named Cleake, who was pleading insanity for a defense. This scared me, had the asylum learned to brainwash its patients? Then the next newsflash brought me back, I heard the name Alistair and was excited that he was mentioned, he had done it, he had proved the asylum conspiracy against all odds. But as I listened to the next statement, I learned that Alistair was the second victim, although the police believed it to be an open case, in my mind I knew that the asylum had reached him and cut him off like a rotten fruit, so that they could continue their crimes. I slumped against the wall when I heard the broadcast; my only friend, my only hope, was gone. What was I to do now? Where was I to go? The woods, they were safe enough. I could hide there indefinitely, I was slowly learning how to survive by eating plants and communicating with the animals. Yes, that’s what I would do. There was no more hope in the world, the town was falling apart and the asylum was making an army of lunatics by brainwash. If I stayed I would only join the ranks, maybe I could revisit the town every now and then, try to convince the people of their fate and bring them to hide in the woods with me. Not now though, I had to survive myself first. I returned to the forest, to the familiar whistles of the birds, the lapping of the water from the pond, and the wind through the trees.