Involuntary Commitment
From the 3 random words: Institution, Lizard, Zoothapsis. From @samsdarkreads on Instagram.
(Below is AI generated art from the title!)
The last thing that I could remember was Shaw, the orderly, coming into my room last night. He hadn’t fastened his skin correctly—it hung loose around his face. I don’t know if he was in a hurry or something, didn’t have the time to look properly human. But what I really think was that he wanted to me see him like that. To see his mask slipping. Just to taunt me. To tell me that I was right (the whole time) before knocking me out of the picture.
I’d had another of my screaming fits...
So Shaw was coming to give me the meds. It was something about the moon that night, I think. It wasn’t full, but damn near. And it was bright. The light of it shined into the window, and the bars across it cast long shadows over my bed.
And it wasn’t just me that night either! I could hear down the hall that Jones was having a screaming fit too. And someone else. But I couldn’t tell who it was...Andrews maybe? But the moon was affecting more than just me tonight.
Didn’t think that it was out of the ordinary that Shaw came in. He always does when I scream. It was the only time that I ever looked forward to seeing the creature masquerading as a man. I liked the sleeping meds. I liked sleep. Especially when it was so hard to sleep. But when I saw Shaw’s face, his loose skin hanging down like wet toilet paper...I didn’t want to take them. I feared for my life.
You see: I’d gotten too close to revealing their scheme. I was telling the others. I had told Dr. Goodman too, earlier that very day. What’s more: he believed me.
And I was this close to having a real breakthrough. To really be able to show Dr. Goodman something that would knock his socks off. Tomorrow. Maybe. But more likely next week. But first just had to sleep for the night.
And of course I could not.
When I can’t sleep, I don’t know why, but I start to scream. It is a soft thing at first, and I stay laying in my bed, eyes closed, trying. But when I try, that’s when I can’t fall asleep. And I only try to fall asleep when I can’t sleep. So you can see the dilemma that I find myself in on these kinds of nights.
The screams grow louder and I start to rock back in forth in my bed. Eventually I am out of bed, and I start to pace. And I scream really loud then. Not words. Just howls. I can’t help this. It just happens to me.
Dr. Goodman tried telling me that this was just part of my “condition” and that, in time, the medicine he’s giving me will help it to go away. He says that he can’t make my condition as a whole go away—that will be part of me forever. But that parts of my condition, some of the worse parts of it, will go away in time if I keep taking my medicine.
And I did.
I’d been taking it like a good boy for months now. But my “condition” hadn’t improved at all. It felt worse. I tried telling Dr. Goodman about Shaw and the other orderlies a long time ago. I tell him my suspicions in almost every meeting that we have. He used to tell me that this was also just “part of my condition” but I knew that it wasn’t.
I can tell the difference.
And I could tell that Dr. Goodman was starting to understand this too. It’s hard not to believe someone when they come back week after week with new evidence.
Dr. Goodman is a smart man. He is a man of science. He listens to facts. I understood this about him after a few meetings with him. And so I decided that I would start bringing him the facts. Eventually, he would see the truth.
But I was too late.
Not fast enough to convince him. And now they were coming for me. To get me out of the picture. I was too much of a liability now. Because people would start to know that I was telling the truth. And that it wasn’t just “part of my condition.”
Shaw held me down. He was so strong for one that looked so frail—just a skeleton with skin in his current appearance. He did not have the usual meds this time. A needle. Injected me. The last thing I saw were the sunken red eyes of the creature behind his mask of flesh. I slept, but thought I had died.
But I wasn’t dead. I woke up eventually. I had no memory of opening my eyes, but they were open. Painfully dry. And I could not blink.
I could not move at all.
It took a long time to have any understanding of my surroundings. I was laying on the ground. Outside. It seemed to still be the same night, as I could see the same bluish light from the moon illuminating the dark leaves of trees above me. It was a windless night; the leaves never moved. Never made a sound.
Frozen solid, just like me.
I could hear the sound of a shovel breaking into dirt, scooping some out, setting it aside, going back for more. A grunt every now and then from whoever it was doing the labor. My mind had not yet realized the full extent of the horrors I was to face. Not yet.
And for some reason, as I listened to the repetitions of the sound, a memory came back to me. Like a movie playing in my mind. I would’ve been able to see it perfectly clear, if I had been able to close my eyes. But even with them stuck open, I saw it. My daughter, Anna, when she was very young. Playing at the beach on our first family vacation. She was too afraid to go into the ocean (I didn’t blame her), so she stayed up on the beach and played in the sand. She had this little pink shovel, and a pink bucket, and had the time of her life scooping up the fine sands of the beach there in the Isle of Palms. She filled the bucket. Dumped it out. Then repeated.
Life was good then. It was before any symptoms of my “condition” had appeared.
She dug the sand in the same rhythm of the one who dug now. And I was suddenly filled with an intense desire to press pause on my life. I wanted to press the rewind button, even. Go back. Back to that time. Before my condition. I’d had this desire many times since I’d been committed. But this was the strongest. Because I was now starting to realize that I was never actually going to get out of here. I was going to die in this place.
And it wasn’t on account of my “condition.” It was because I had stumbled onto something that I wasn’t supposed to have. Because I had seen what I wasn’t allowed to see. Because I knew what I shouldn’t know.
If I could just go back...
I stayed in that miserable state of panic for some time. But was shocked out of it when the digging stopped. Footsteps coming over to me. I couldn’t actually feel anything when they grabbed my arms and started pulling me. But I saw the earth and sky move. I didn’t feel anything when I was dropped into the hole. I rolled down into it, and for one frightful moment I thought I would be stuck face down in the dirt. But mercifully I rolled over one last time, and saw once again that night sky with blue light in it. Only this time I was looking up through the dirt.
And as I began to truly realize what was happening, the desire to rewind my life was the strongest it had ever been. My need to scream was worse than it had ever been. My eyes burned with wicked dry pain. If I could just blink!
The first shovel of dirt was tossed in. I couldn’t feel where it landed, but it wasn’t over my face. Thank God for that small mercy. But it would only be a matter of time. If I could just go back. Just rewind life...a little bit.
I wouldn’t even go all the way back. I wouldn’t wish away my condition! I can live with it. I can keep it under control.
Part of me would want to go that far back. To still have my family. To be able to see Anna grow into a woman. See her get married someday. Walk her down the aisle. But I knew that that was selfish. My condition—at least at the time that I was still living with my family—had put her at risk on more than one occasion. It made my wife Norah’s life a nightmare. And it made Anna’s life one where there could be danger. I found myself always losing track of things. Forgetting what I was doing, while I was doing it.
When I had taken Anna (who was five years old at the time) to the grocery store with me, and came back without her—that was the last straw for Norah. I’d become distracted while at the store. I say “distracted” but the early episodes I experienced because of my condition were more serious than the word “distracted” conveys. I would say that those episodes were equal parts distraction, obsession and panic. And a double pour of each.
I came to the institution three days later.
The episodes were still bad, but in here I couldn’t hurt anyone that I loved.
Another shovel of dirt was flung down onto me. I’d still not seen who it was that did this, but felt certain I would catch a glimpse of them as long as I kept my focus on the side of the hole where the shovel appeared with every new scoop. The dirt had to be covering my body now. I could not feel anything; and I could not move my head to see the dirt. But from the number of times a shovel full of dirt had been dropped onto me, it had to be covering my body. My legs. But not yet my face.
Keep reading with a 7-day free trial
Subscribe to Amphetamine Daydreams to keep reading this post and get 7 days of free access to the full post archives.