Asylum
Brian Hodge
Bartles and I are into our second game of chess when he remarks that the man next door to him hasn't come to the day-room in two weeks.
"I should imagine they'll be letting him out soon."
"Probably faking," I say. "Anybody can do two weeks of self-imposed solitary."
Whenever one of us stops craving the simple contact of others like himself, it can be an early sign that something has started to unravel. But for anyone trying to scam his way out, it's the easiest symptom to feign.
Bartles threatens my bishop with a rook. "Well, he's screaming throughout most of the nights, too."
"And anybody can yell." Ever the skeptic.
"After his throat sounds raw enough to bleed? Hurts mine just to listen."
I reconsider. "Self-mutilation's good. Maybe he'll pull this off after all."
Six moves later grandfatherly Bartles has me in checkmate, and we set it up again. Around us, our ward's other rehabilitants mill about the day-room, some putting on inept displays of schizoid ties and twitches, but most too proud to betray their sanity. It is, after all, the only living we have left to truly call our own.
The Order of Saint Cool Hand Luke, some of us have, in feeble bravado, taken to calling ourselves. No matter how hard they try, they'll never break us down.
Hands across the board; pawns advance, pawns fall.
"Hewson had me brought in to see him this morning," I say.
He's the nearest thing to a director here, evaluating who's ready for release. But there's no logic to the schedule he keeps. You might see him for six months, then find yourself dragged before him twice a day for a week. Unremarkable looking, Hewson nevertheless has ways of getting under your skin.
"Did he talk?" Bartles asks.
"Mostly just sat there again."
Arthritic and grizzled, Bartles shudders. "That's worse."
"Jesus, tell me about it. Man's like a snake. Stares at you for hours and won't twitch a muscle, and just when you think he's not really in the same room with you, then he'll clear his throat and lean across that desk. Creeps me out every time."
And he's hard to bluff. Uncanny, Hewson's knack for knowing his own kind, weeding out the fake from the genuine. He and the rest of them aren't out of touch with reality at all -- they just define it differently. The day their madness became a contagion was proof to me of some ghastly hive mind at work in the universe. Entropic manifestations of chaos, shaking everything down to a primal new order of irrationality. Cities and towns became unwalled bedlams.
The rest of us? Now we're the ones who need reconditioning to fit in, holding onto our minds like fragile eggs. Two plus two is still four, but they're the ones with the cattle prods. And the snake. And rats. And insects. And the will to use them on us.
"I wonder what Hewson was looking for in you this time."
"It's my drawings," I whisper. "They examine them while I'm in here. I go back to my room and they're out of order. So now I'm running my own scam. Forget those mountains and landscapes i used to draw -- those'll never get me out of here."
Bartles grins, slides out his queen. "So now you're giving them nightmares?"
"Everything from the martyrdom of the apostles to reality's breakdown on edge of a black hole. My ticket out of here."
Bartles shakes his head, seen it tried before. "It won't be enough. Drawings alone are never good enough for them."
"I've got that covered." I scoot a lowly pawn. "Checkmate."
I'm nowhere near his king and we both know it. He starts to protest, then his eyes understand. By then I'm over the table and chessmen are flying, and his chair topples backward as I straddle his chest. My fingers throttle leathery wattles; my thumbs force voice box toward vertebrae. He manages a wheeze before something snaps. I take two bishops and plunge their mitered tops into hi dimming eyes, while watched by a roomful of others.
"You see how he cheats?" I shout to them. "He changes the color of the pieces!"
