Rose
Eyes are tricky things. Spindly little veins decorate each pair and, though the thought is foolish, I’ve had enough eyes on me to know that those veins reach out like branches and come close to physical contact. Some stares touch you, hold you.
Some are more binding than any straitjacket.
Thankfully, I’m not wearing one today.
The eyes on me appraise me in this torturous solitude, and I stare back, pushing against their comfort from behind the door the best way I know how. There’s only a small opening, making it impossible for me to see anything other than those exacting eyes.
I hope mine reach out and touch them.
I hope the touch scares them. Hurts them.
And when they run back to report, I hope they shudder, just enough that the hair on their arms stands on end.
A slight squint is all I get and then they’re sliding the opening shut.
I didn’t always like the way people looked at me. I especially didn’t like how I could read exactly what they were thinking when they were looking at me. I used to think I could read minds but when I discovered it was my voice in my head telling me everything, I realized I was just reading their body language and filling in the blanks.
Thirteen, fourteen.
Oftentimes I think I’m a genius.
Until I do something incredibly reckless like stabbing Barb in the arm with the sharp edge of the plastic fork that I kept in my waistband, before they took it away. All because she kept interrupting the game of tic tac toe I was playing with Allison. But Barb and Allison aren’t in confinement, I am. I should’ve learned my lesson last time, but the anger runs too hot for me to keep it contained like a bottle with its top secured tightly. It was a futile fight, trying to keep it within when it won every time.
So perhaps I’m not a genius. Perhaps I am my emotions’ slave; chained and whipped into improper action.
Twenty-seven, twenty-eight.
I look down at my arms, covered in and pocked with the marks the nurses left, whether a few hours ago or in the three years I’ve been here. I don’t understand why they don’t try to use their words first.
But when it’s time to assist, it’s usually past the point of words if I’m involved.
Still, they don’t politely escort anyone anywhere. The moment we pass through those doors, before the ink has even permanently ebbed itself in the documents keeping us here, we are no longer deemed fit to experience even a touch of respect. They grab you and drag you in a weak attempt to enforce their power and all the while, I’m hearing what they’re thinking.
She’s insane.
Don’t let her get too close.
Don’t become her next victim.
I can see it in the narrowing of their eyes; the way they hesitate to touch me. They’ve seen what I’m capable of. They’ve been briefed.
I’ve just hit four hours when the door opens, the sound of the uneven bottom scraping at the dry concrete. It’s jarring after so long in silence and I’m sure my visitor witnessed the flinch I attempted to hide, as if I were only adjusting myself.
Comfort is something I’d lose myself in trying to find. An ever-evasive foe.
“How are we doing, Ms. Montgomery?”
Meant to sound warm, all his voice does is grate at my annoyance. And annoyance leads to anger and anger leads to people getting hurt or killed and scrubbing blood from my violent hands. I keep my eyes trained on present company in an attempt to keep from checking if they’d cleaned the blood from beneath my nails. The way they’d scrubbed was enough to make it so my hands felt slightly burned.
“Speaking French again, Joe?” I try for casual. Faking it so I can stand to be in this dank room with this incompetent man.
I hate his name. It’s so dull. Even his last name is dull.
Brown. Joseph Brown.
“Funny that you mention it,” he starts, “I’m nearly fluent in French.”
“Tu es bête comme tes pieds,” I say as he rifles through the pages on his clipboard.
He offers a small smile and a nod. I can’t tell if he understands and doesn’t want to engage, or if he’s just a pretender.
I spent too many springs coasting along the French Riviera when I was free to give Joe the satisfaction of thinking that I’m beneath him in any way.
Joe. I want to roll my eyes. Many sessions I have to fight myself to keep from asking him who hated him enough to name him.
He sounds like he lives vicariously through people. That’s probably why he insists on acting like we’ve been stuck in this box of a room, speaking French and counting together.
“How long have you been in here?” He settles the edge of his clipboard into his stomach, holding the other end in his hands so it juts out toward me.
“Four hours, three minutes, and thirty-six seconds.” My words are low, but clear. If there’s anything in the world my mother hated, it was when I mumbled. So I got in the habit of clearly enunciating every single thing I say.
“I heard you had another violent outburst.” His voice slices through the bubble I try to build around myself. Almost conspiratorially, like we’re friends sharing secrets.
I’m starting to wish for punishing solitude.
I don’t know that I’m like others. When I hear a sentence, the unimportant words fall to the wayside and I hone in on the word that sticks out most to me. In this case, I hate that he says “another,” as if I need to be reminded of the moments and experiences that led to my imprisonment. He’d never let me forget even a second of it. I have years behind me. I still have decades left in here to have my actions drilled into my head relentlessly. There is no room to forget; certainly not in this snug little room that smells like bleach and urine, each inhale costing me a little more of my senses.
In all my years here, there’s one emotion I’ve yet to experience. The nurses used to watch me closely when I first got here, as if I should have been drowning in my regret over the things the news said about me; the things they’d read in my files. It only took biting one of them to get them to stand a little farther from me and to completely avoid eye contact.
“Did you hear Barbra needed stitches?” he asks, and I reward him with a glare when I blink up at him.
He shoves his hands in his pockets and I fight the recurring urge to roll my eyes. My eighteenth birthday is only a few days away and it’s a goal of mine to be treated like an adult. So I have to act like one.
“You know I haven’t heard anything, Joe,” I tell him slowly, carefully, as I glance around the room to remind him that this is where I’ve been.
At least he isn’t writing on that clipboard of his. He hesitates before he steps closer to me, presses his clipboard against his chest, and looks directly in my eyes . Doesn’t he know I bit one of his nurses for a less direct stare?
“And you feel no remorse?” His question is a whisper and he steps back to look down at his clipboard. It’s a question he’s asked too many times to count.
My answer is always the same. “I’m not familiar with that emotion.” Bored, I start to pick at my split ends. I never knew what made them so terrible until I got here, my ends drying up and tangling with ease. Mother always made sure I was groomed to perfection. I’m sure if she saw my nail beds now, she’d have a stroke.
Then again, I doubt she’d care. I haven’t seen any of my family members since I was signed in, though my mother should stay away. Still, almost two birthdays have passed with nothing from Grace.
Will I ever see my sister again?
“Rosamunde?”
I sigh and look up at the doctor, my brow arching. “Yes?”
“I know you think you’re correcting people but you have to know you aren’t an enforcer of right and wrong…”
Because apparently my moral compass is shot.
“…and this isn’t a typical social setting. These patients don’t realize what they’re doing or how they’re treating others.”
“And yet someone still punished them by putting them in here.” I tuck my hair behind both ears. “Unless you’d like to take responsibility for how they are now, Joe.”
Joe isn’t paying my response any attention as he shuffles through the pages on his clipboard. “Look, I can try to get you out of here in a few hours if you promise to work on this. You can’t go harming other patients again. If we’re preparing you for the day you get out of here, that doesn’t fly out there either.”
His argument makes me squint. It’s hard to believe this man has a thorough education.
“I’m not getting out of here any time soon. By the time I leave, you’ll be retired. Maybe even dead,” I deadpan.
He grimaces and I nod.
“So don’t attempt to fill me with this false sense of hope. That’s the kind of thing that makes me violent,” I say.
“, just tell me you’ll work on it so I can get you out of here before you count yourself to death.”
The amusement I hear in his tone has my skin growing warm, the lava beneath my surface churning and rolling with an increasing need to be free.
Unlikely, I want to tell him, but instead I tell him what he wants to hear for once. I hate solitary so much; it beats me down and makes me passive.
“I will,” I lie.
“That’s all I needed to hear,” he says before placing his hand on my shoulder.
I hate that insincere touch but I let him keep his hand there for a moment. Anything to get out of here.
In another life, when I’d been able to watch movies, I watched The Hulk . The redundancy of Marvel’s take on a Jekyll and Hyde storyline almost had me impatient to change the channel.
But the way Bruce Banner eventually embraced the monster—in a way Dr. Jekyll never really did—fascinated me.
Don’t make me angry. You won’t like me when I’m angry.
I smile at the way those words stick and Mr. Brown smiles back. I look away like the rebellious caged animal that I am, refusing to perform for the master.
In truth, part of me feels liberated in here.
My demons have a playground; one where I’m not the only one who doesn’t play by the same rules as the other kids.
In my last life, I’d been forced to be Dr. Jekyll. Bruce Banner.
In this life, I’m only ever the monster.
He steps out and I’m right back to counting.
One, two, three.
It’s only after three hours that Mr. Hyde is let out to mingle with the rest of the monsters.