Brattleboro

BRATTLEBORO:

Battle Cry of Lizzy

By

Michael S. Freeman

1.

1949 Vermont – Brattleboro Retreat (Vermont Asylum for the Insane)

Lizzy, 19 and frail, leans her head against the cold glass of the 49 Studebaker. Fall decorates the forest in a sort of Technicolor array that flashes past, blending and swirling, bending the light just enough to add the hazy glow of a Saturday morning cartoon.

Off, in the distance a rooftop emerges, growing from the treetops to the sky. The car pulls in at a dirt driveway to at the front of a masterpiece of architecture. Two orderlies and a nurse dressed all in white with a little paper hat emerge from the building.

Lizzy watches as the strangers approach the car, then looks to her father in the front seat, his hands gripping the wheel, head down. “Daddy, please don’t make me stay here.” She pleads.

“Liz, you need to be here. Your mother and I feel that all the fornication and the smoking and booze, well, there just has to be something wrong in your head. These people will find it and get it out.” He offers with no eye contact.

Lizzy opens the door, taking her suitcase from the seat. Before she can even get the door closed completely, her father speeds away, throwing gravel and snow from the Goodyear radials. One of the orderlies snatches the suitcase from her hand while the nurse puts an arm across Lizzy’s shoulders.

“Come on dear, we have your room all set up for you.”

Lizzy reluctantly allows the nurse to lead her up the meager stairs to a pair of enormous doors laden with four by six panes of yellow encrusted glass.

The halls are cold and white with large metal doors embedded within the walls. In the middle of each hall there sprawls a nurse station, where more of the nurses are, clad in the same outfit as the woman leading her. The first door to the right of the station looks to be that of a frat house. Trash paper and broken down furniture strewn about. A man shuts the door in Lizzy’s face. A placard on the door reads; “ORDERLY LOUNGE.” Lizzy giggles under her breath as she thinks, “Figures, Men are disgusting.”

The last room at the end of the hall has Lizzy’s suitcase in front of it. “This is your room, young Miss.” The nurse states as she unlocks and opens the door.

Lizzy looks inside to see nothing but a broken down bed with a thin mattress, paint chips peeling from the drab, mint green walls and one small window eight feet from the floor. The window is offering a limited amount of light, but the bars make a nice contrast on the cement floor.

The nurse flips up the wool blanket edge. “Now put your things away in this storage, then come join us for breakfast in the cafeteria.”

The nurse leaves the room just as Lizzy begins to put her things in the make-shift wooden storage. She pulls her shoes off and lays her bare feet on the cold, but rather smooth floor. A comforting feeling sweeps over her, memories of Christmas morning and the hardwood of her bedroom at home.

A sharp rap on the door brings her back to reality. The orderly that brought her bag in, is standing at her door in all his chubbiness, looking like a marshmallow that rolled in the dirt. Sweat stains yellowing the pits of his pristine white shirt. “Time to eat girl.” He barks.

Lizzy makes her way through the maze of halls to the cafeteria. She is given a tray with a paper cup. Inside is a beige pill. “What is this?” She queries the woman handing out the trays.

The woman looks up from her pill placing. “It’s your fucking medicine dearie, now move your ass along.”

Moving down the line, a blob of either oatmeal or already chewed bread is slopped on Lizzy’s tray. The mass oozes, spreading into the slot on her tray, settling into a weird textured pond, confined by the walls of the tray. Next stop offers a large glass of room temperature milk that may or may not have curdled slightly on top, just too questionable to be able to tell for sure.

Lizzy finds a seat alone. All the while sitting for her meal, the chubby orderly continues to eye her, and not in a comfortable way. It felt more like the way dog looks at a bone. Too uncomfortable by the situation, Lizzy gets up and goes back to her room.

Night has come, Lizzy is settling into her bed. Most of the staff has gone for the day except Chubby and a nurse for her wing. Just as she drifts off to sleep, the door to her room flings open, slamming hard into the block wall. It’s Chubby. He enters the room, closing the door behind him.

“Now, your fine little bitch, now we are alone.” He mutters as he moves towards the bed.

Lizzy looks for anything to protect herself, but there is nothing. She begins to kick at him, catching him in the testicles. Chubby hits the floor, doubled over in pain. Lizzy attempts to run past

him, only to have him grab her by the leg. He pulls a syringe from his back pocket with his free hand. Stabbing the needle deep into her upper thigh, Lizzy screams out.

“Scream all you want, no one is going to hear ya.” He says as he tosses her back on the bed.

Chubby straddles Lizzy as he opens his pocket knife. Lizzy falls limp while he begins to cut open her gown. The sweat drips from his nose onto her face. He slowly cuts down the gown until he reaches the hem, then opens it, exposing Lizzy’s astonishing ivory-white frame to the moonlight seeping in the window.

Too busy trying to fumble his little pecker out, Chubby never notices the glowing smoke that comes up from a crack in the floor and enter Lizzy’s nose. Just as he penetrates her, Lizzy’s now soulless eyes pop open.

The nurse has returned from break. Hearing the commotion from Lizzy’s room, she calls for the orderly. No response. The nurse begins to walk to the room, still hearing the sounds as if someone was tearing down the walls. She gets to the door and fumbles for the key.

The tumblers click in the door, and she starts to open it only to be greeted by having the door slammed back shut, sending her across the hall, and bouncing off the adjacent wall. The nurse gets back to her feet and runs at the door, but it opens and she slides into the room.

Inside the lights flicker, illuminating a bloodbath from the walls to the floor. On the bed lays Chubby, gutted, intestines still dropping to the floor from his body cavity.

The light flickers enough for the nurse to get back up and realize she is covered in blood. In complete shock, she looks around the room for Lizzy or any sign of her, to no avail. The light goes black for a few seconds then all the lights in the wing begin to flicker. Scared, the nurse makes her way to the door, slipping and sliding from the blood on her shoes. She makes it to the desk at the nurse station and picks up the phone.

“I need police… . . . At Brattleboro…. . .” She sputters into the phone.

A noise from Lizzy’s room catches her attention. The nurse peeks over the desk, but nothing is there. “Please hurry.”

The nurse lays the phone on the floor then eases back on the side of the desk. She closes her eyes, but when she opens them, Lizzy is crawling across the ceiling towards her in a twisted, contortionist manner. Jerking and popping, she clicks closer and closer.

Backtracking, the nurse tries to crawl away, but the blood has made the floor too slick. An ear- piercing wail comes from Lizzy causing the nurse to turn. Just as she faces Lizzy, the nurse sees her leap from the ceiling towards her face, then everything goes black.

Dawn arrives, bringing with it a mass of police and coroners parked in front of Brattleboro.

Inside is a horrific scene. The halls are flooded with a crimson river of blood from all the occupants inside. Dismembered bodies laid to waste throughout. Off in the corner is a rookie puking in a trash can

2.

PRESENT DAY

Journal Entry December 22, 2015

My therapist tells me I need to write this down, so I figured no better time than the present. I was sent to Brattleboro back in 2000 because of my suicidal tendencies. What I didn’t tell anyone, not even my therapist, is that when I was around ten years old, my parents had a party at our house. Yes, there were drugs before you ask and no I was in bed for the night.

While I laid in my bed with my Hello Kitty blankets tucked tight to me, my door creaked open. It was Stan, dad’s best friend and business partner. He crept into my room and did unspeakable things to me that night. When he finished, Stan told me that if I told anyone he would kill my mom and dad in front of me then move on to my little brother before doing me in.

At ten I was terrified of this asshole’s empty threats. I truly believed that if I told anyone the things he did to me on every occasion he could get me alone, I would in fact witness the murder of my entire family.

A few years passed, taking with it my childhood innocence. I changed to a dark version of myself at sixteen, and everyone took notice. I would find myself stealing, doing drugs, breaking into friends’ houses, anything just to feel something but numbness. I took up a razorblade and began cutting myself that year. I guess that is how I ended up in Brattleboro. Too deep one night. Who would have thought?

That is not what this is about though. To move forward, I need to get what happened at Brattleboro out if I can.

My parents took me from the hospital the night I cut too deep and brought me to Brattleboro. The nurses all seemed chill and the orderlies where pretty cool too. I mean, they smoke weed with me in the boiler room, and it was more like a party than being locked away in some nut-house.

Being there felt more like home to me more than any place I had ever been. Mom and Dad came to visit and once in a while that prick Stan would stop in, only I refused to see him. Days blurred to weeks, and the weeks blurred to months. My friends would swing by from time to time and toke it up with me and the Ords in the basement.

But you know that old saying, Give ‘em an inch, and they will take a mile. That applied to my sitch that night. I was in my room, the last on the left from the nurse station. I had just gotten out of the shower, and was still in my towel. There was a knock on my door. It was Frank, the orderly that I loved keeping company with the most.

I invited him in, not really thinking I was just in the towel. Once I realized, I dropped the terry to the floor, exposing all of me to him. A shy grin spread across his face as he closed and locked my door behind him.

I bent over the metal foot-board of the bed and allowed him to plunge his huge cock inside me. Oh my god he was good at it. The waves of his thrusts as his thighs hit my ass and made we wither in pure ecstasy. It was like nothing I had ever felt before. He pulled out just as his orgasm spurt from the tip of his dick. The warm fluid ran up my back from my ass crack to between my shoulders.

I stood up to a hazy room. I thought, “Man that was great fucking.” Accidently, I blurted that it was so great I was left in a fog. He laughed at my observation then agreed that he was a little in a fog as well.

A loud knock on my door sent us both rushing for clothes. He dressed first and stood by the door while I slipped on my sweat shirt and pants. I perched on the bed waiting for him to open the door. Frank turned the knob and BLAM! All four of my friends flooded into my room.

It was after visiting hours and they needed to get baked, so Frank took us to the boiler room. Jules pulled out a nug of weed and a grinder, then proceeded to make up the confection for the mind.

After a few minutes of smoking, I felt strange. Almost as if someone had taken me over. I blacked out. I remember bits and pieces of that night, like moving about in the dark, looking down on my friends and other people in the Asylum from the ceiling, but nothing concrete.

I woke up the next morning completely naked and covered in blood. I was laying in the middle of the cafeteria kitchen, body parts in the pans and blood everywhere. I remember the panic as I tried to get up, but the warm to the touch blood was so slick I kept falling.

I got up and made it through the halls of the dead and dismembered people of the hospital, but there was no one there. Grabbing my clothes and dressing as I made my way to the boiler room, I found them. My friends scattered everywhere, ripped to bits with entrails and blood everywhere.

Frank hung from one of the pipes in the ceiling, his intestines hanging in his face, leaking his body fluids and blood onto my face and hair. I puked as I dropped to my knees in tears.

I struggled to my feet, making my way to the huge double doors. One more look back at the massacre then a hard push and sunlight flooded in. I put my hand up to shield the sun when this jerk tackled me. It was a fucking cop. He cuffed me and threw me in a van built more like a steel cage for animals.

The trial was short and sweet since all the witnesses had died, and I was the only person alive in the whole facility. I was found guilty of two-hundred-thirty-six murders by insanity since I could not remember what happened. I was sentenced to life at Bridgewater State Hospital in the criminally insane ward.

So that is my story and the therapist was right. I do feel better, but I have to go. Company is coming and I need to visit them.

Best,

Elizabeth

Elizabeth waits patiently in the patient lounge for her guest to arrive. A man walks in and looks over the room, catching her eyes. Stan. He approaches the table, a somber look on his face. Elizabeth kicks out the chair across from her in a weak gesture allowing him to sit.

Stan sits, leans forward. “Elizabeth, I know I am not who you thought was coming today, but I have to tell you. Your parents, their plane went down last night on the way here.” He sits back in his chair. “There were no survivors.”

Elizabeth bursts into hysterical laughter at the news. A guard arrives at the table. “Everything okay here?”

Stan nods and whispers into the guard’s ear what he had just told Elizabeth. The guard puts on Elizabeth’s restraints and leads her and Stan off to a private room.

Inside the room, Elizabeth is standing, her back to the door. Stan enters, arms open as the guard shuts the door. “Elizabeth…Sweetie…”

Elizabeth’s head snaps around, a soulless look to her eyes. “THE NAME IS LIZZY!”

The lights go out as Stan screams.

END