Escape

There was only one rule: don’t open the door.

And so I scratched at it until my nails broke and my fingers bled. When the doctors put me in a straight jacket, I banged my head against the door again and again, despite their protests.

Nothing changed.

Still, the doctors kept me locked up in the padded cell. Still, the doctors force-fed me their candy-colored pills. And still, I saw the others. The ones that the doctors said weren’t there. The ones that they said were just a figment of my imagination, or a hallucination, or the delusions of a twisted mind. The bloody man and his victim, the crying woman.

The others told me to join them. I did not belong with the doctors or my family, the others said. I belonged with them.

I tried to fight what the others said. I tried to escape. I knew that if I could just make it out that door, I could leave them behind—I hoped. But nothing I did convinced the doctors to let me out.

I screamed until I was hoarse. I banged my head until I almost lost consciousness. All the doctors did was to tell me to stop misbehaving or I would never leave.

“Come join us,” the others whispered in my ears.

I couldn’t take it anymore. They were right.

I lost my will to eat, and no doctor or nurse could make me. They had to put me on an IV.

My muscles grew too weak to carry on, and I strained to breathe. In the end, as I suffocated, doctors surrounded me in a panic.

The door finally opened to a bright white light. On the other side stood the bloody man and the crying woman.

“Come join us.”