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[Nov. 5th, 2008|03:27 am] |
I wanted to share with you all the first part of my NaNoWriMo Novel. So here it is. Part one. Enjoy!
Part One: You're mad, mad, mad
Two men in white lab coats led the young woman down a long corridor, passing many locked and barred doors, some with tiny rectangular windows above the doorknobs, most without. She stared at the floor the entire time, counting the tiles as she walked. Every few tiles, she noticed, there was a small, perfectly circular, droplet of red liquid, possibly blood.
Looking up, she noticed that she had, in fact, managed to injure one of the men who had taken her from the car. In her stupor, she hadn't realized in the car where she was being taken. She'd barely been able to tell that the car was moving, even, but now that the drugs were wearing off, she knew all too well what was going on. She'd lunged at the men as they tried to help her, clawing and biting at anything that she could.
They stopped at the far end of the corridor, and the men stepped aside, motioning her into the dark, tiny room just ahead. She had half a mind to turn around and run, but knew it would be a futile attempt. As soon as she'd gotten past the threshold, the door slammed shut behind her, and locks clicked into place to seal her in.
10/1
Dear Diary,
I can't believe I have to keep a diary. This sucks, you know? I have nothing to write out here, really. There's no stupid feelings clogging my brain. I have no emotions, good or bad, toward any hot-button issue. In fact, I really could care less about everything in this world. Apparently, that's a problem.
Until they can figure out why I'm so apathetic, as they call it, I can't go home. Instead, I'm confined to this tiny white prison cell, on the 19th floor of the mental institution. I have no books, no television, nothing but this typewriter and a ream of paper. Like it's going to do me any good.
Okay, I guess maybe I have a little bit of resentment. That's an emotion, right? I'm resentful of this whole process. I'm 17 years old, for crying out loud, I should be able to be apathetic! But no. Morton and Julia decided that their perfect daughter was the only child they needed. So the second they saw something in me that they didn't like, I find myself in the backseat of the old station wagon, strapped in tight and pumped full of sedatives.
I'm already sick of writing this, so I think I will stop after I answer the questions they have set out for me today.
Name? Delia Rebecca Jacobson
Age? 17
Height? 5'2”
Weight? A woman never tells
Ambition in life? To get out of this room
Favorite animal? Don't have one
Delia sighed and stared at the paper. She felt tired, so she dimmed the light in the room and curled up on her bed and closed her eyes. Through the tiny window opposite her small hospital bed she could see a church steeple. She wondered what if there was a service going on, even pondered the existance of God for a moment, before drifting off into a dreamless sleep.
10/2
Dear Diary,
I've been being lectured all day. I don't speak with enough emotion, therefore they won't give me what I ask for. At dinner, I asked for salt because the fish they placed before me was very bland, no flavor to it at all. I was rejected, and made to either eat the bland fish, or sit in this cell until I could muster up the ability to change the tone and pitch to my voice. I met another person being held captive here, a boy.
I didn't catch his name. He's being held for Anorexia Nervosa and Bipolar Disorder. He wouldn't eat. He told me that I sound like a female Ben Stein. I asked him who Ben Stein was.
Apparently, they check these journal entries to make sure that I do them every day. I don't really understand how I could not do them daily, since all I have been allowed to do since I arrived has been sleep, type this out, and eat bland food.
Karly, the Aide who's been assigned to me four days a week, said that she wanted to read more about Morton and Julia. So I guess I shall oblige.
Morton is not my birth father. In fact, I have no real relation to him at all. He never married Julia, who, by the way, isn't my mother, but actually my oldest sister, but got her pregnant with my younger “sister” when I was five. Mom croaked, dad had long since gone missing and has been presumed dead, and I got stuck with my sisters and Morton.
He's a computer software designer, I guess. Julia is a walking uterus. There are an extra 10 children in the foster and adoption system because she can't keep her legs shut. Oh, there's that hint of resentment again. Look out, world, I have an emotion!
Julia has never kept a stable job. In nearly 30 years of existence, she's had, probably, five hundred jobs, and kept maybe seven of those for more than two weeks. Instead, she periodically makes- er, made- myself and my sisters give her all of our money for months on end, no matter what job we are doing, no matter how low the pay, no matter what we might be trying to save for.
“Lights out!” a familiar voice called from the hallway. Delia looked up, and for a second almost felt sad that she couldn't finish typing her entry. She'd sat down, intending to write a very long entry, but when faced with the keyboard, couldn't bring herself to unleash all the strange little thoughts that had plagued her the whole day.
10/3
Dear Diary,
I wonder why they make me keep using the pleasantries of “dear diary” when I write in this stupid thing. I mean, seriously, you aren't a living being, you aren't a friend of mine, you aren't my dear. So why do I have to do it?
I'm tired. They wouldn't let me sleep last night, I guess they were trying to get me frustrated. It didn't work, and now I think they are frustrated. Understandably, really, I mean, I've just gone so far into my “shell” that I just don't care anymore, but even that isn't right. I don't care, but I don't not care. I don't have any “caring” emotion whatsoever. I don't even know why, and I'm not so sure it's such a bad thing as everyone says it is. I'm better this way, I think. I don't have to act on emotional impulse. I can dawdle as long as I want, or I can go quickly into whatever action I feel is best to do. But wait, I don't feel.
Well, maybe I should elaborate on that. I do feel, like pain and the softness of a silken cloth, but I don't feel the emotions that go with either sensation. I don't cry when I get hurt, I proved that when I fell down the stairs this morning, and the smell of bacon doesn't make me miss my mother. They're senses. Without them I'd be a little lost. The emotions aren't necessary. Yes, Karly, I am writing that directly at you.
“Hey, Delia, do you have a minute?” one of the nurses for the 19th floor, Lana, asked, poking her head into the room. Delia shrugged and pushed back the typewriter. “I've been writing out your report for the end of the day, and I was wondering if your therapy has been having any negative effects that you've noticed since your Aides have gone home?”
Delia thought for a moment, then responded, “They're making me think. And I'm not much into thinking.”
Lana smiled softly, “But sometimes thinking is the one thing that we must do, whether we want to or not. Sleep well.”
Before Delia could ask what she meant by that, the nurse was gone.
10/4
Formalities and pleasantries are being pushed aside from now on. I guess you could say I don't feel like using them. Thank you, I'll be here all week.
I have good news, I guess. Julia has signed my care over completely to this institution. So this room is mine until I'm 21. It'd be 18, but since I am not allowed to procure a job on my own while I am staying here, I have to wait until I'm 21 to receive the money that my father “left” for me when he decided to high-tail it out of the country. Or, you know, where ever he went.
Because I will be living here until I turn 21, they are shipping my personal items to me; my clothes, my books, my television and movie collection. At least I won't be bored. Or, whatever this emotionless equivalent is.
They did get some sort of response from me today, I guess. I was doing my schoolwork, Calculus, to be exact (I have always been at the top of my class. I'm just gifted like that), and a ladybug flew in through the window in the community room. It landed on the book I was using. I guess I smiled at it before I flicked it away. Mikaela and Jonathan, my Aides for two and five days a week, respectively, both commented when I turned my work in. I shrugged.
I don't count a smile as an emotional response. I count it as, well, I don't quite know what I count it as. I don't know if it even counts as a response.
10/5
I met my doctor today, finally. From what I've been able to gather for information, this place is at full capacity right now, which apparently means that the doctors and therapists are barely able to keep up, and five days of waiting is probably the shortest amount of time passing between admission and evaluation.
I've been throwing up ever since leaving his office, though. I think I may be having an allergic reaction to his bullshit, to be honest. Oh no, there's that “resentment” again.
10/6
I've been in this room all day. Seriously. I have not been allowed out except to go pee. And they rushed me through peeing. So I barely could pee. But whatever, it's pee, I guess. If my bladder explodes, it was meant to be.
Mikaela is out sick, so Jonathan had to come in on his day off. He “had to.” I don't think I understand why I have to have three different Aides that overlap their time in such a backward way. I think I wrote about this a few days ago. They come in, Mikaela for two days, Karly for four days, and Jonathan for five days, all in a row. And they each have two days off between these streaks of working.
Mikaela also works with a mentally disabled child for three days each week, she does so for the three days prior to the days she works with me. Karly works with that boy I mentioned earlier, the Bipolar Anorexic? I found out his name is David. And apparently he talks about me. A lot.
Jonathan is sitting next to me right now watching everything I type. He laughed at that last sentence. And that one. I guess he finds it amusing that I can write about someone as though they aren't even really there, but they really are looking over my shoulder.
Seriously, Jonathan, you'll be reading this thing soon enough. Stop it. No, this is not anger I am displaying. I am merely questioning why exactly you feel the need to look over my shoulder as I type this out!
Jonathan laughed and took Delia by the arm. “I want to show you something. You can finish your diary later.” Delia looked up at him, then obliged and walked with him. He led her down two flights of stairs and into a small room that was decorated with brightly colored stars and planets. “I read in your profile that, when you were younger, you loved going to the planetarium. Well, this might not be accurate, but it can be quite pretty,” he explained, closing the door and dimming the lights.
At the very center of the room there was a large sphere on a thick post. There seemed to be tiny holes in the sphere. Delia was just about to touch it when a light came on inside it and the sphere began to rotate, sending sparkling dots of light across the ceiling, floor, and walls.
A very tiny smile began to form on her lips before disappearing behind the indifferent expression she'd had for so long.
10/6
Patient D. Jacobson shows signs of awareness, however seems to lack ability to respond properly to stimuli. Jacobson begins to acknowledge things, and promptly masks said response, either willfully or not. It has yet to be determined how extensive her problem is, however, it is my theory as her Aide, that we should allow her to be a teenager. Let her put posters up in her room, sit on the internet for hours on end, and relax. I am certain that if we give her some freedom to do things that she wants to, she will begin to respond more naturally.
~J. Arnold
10/7
My stuff started arriving today, my old familiar pieces (bed, clothing, doll collection) along with a few things I didn't recognize as mine (a computer. A COMPUTER!) Needless to say, I am a little bit taken aback. Yes, an emotion. I was not expecting to receive such an interesting addition to my collection of blandness in this tiny room. Karly says that Jonathan wrote to my treatment advisor and asked that I be allowed to “just be a kid” for once, I guess.
I have begun to set up the computer. Well, the computers. I don't know why, but they gave me a desktop and a laptop, both loaded with software packages that had to have cost many thousands of dollars. It's a nice sentiment, I guess. I also received a cordless mouse and keyboard for the desktop computer, and two tablets, one for each computer. Everything is already installed, which means that there is, most likely, a bunch of spyware and firewalls on the internet connection.
But I definitely will not look this gift horse in the mouth. This is a huge step forward in their feelings toward me, not to mention probably a ploy to get me to drop my guard.
I also received a schedule of things I will get to do and see beyond the walls of this institution. Mondays I get to visit the mall with Jonathan or Karly. Thursdays I can choose to attend a theater class at the local community center. Fridays and Saturdays are open to field trips and visits to off-site therapists. Sundays I may attend any religious ceremonies I would like (Saturdays are also open to this).
But I may only keep this schedule if my schoolwork does not suffer. Oh no, I have a stipulation to follow! They say that this sarcasm I am beginning to develop may be a good thing. After all, it is better than when I arrived and they had to poke me and prod me to get me to write or talk.
They also will be allowing me to create things for money. Well, not exactly. I will be creating art pieces and/or crafts (depending on what I feel like doing) to sell in a local bazaar during the weekly farmers' market. I can have half of the money my items sell for, and I think I would like that.
Before Julia decided that Morton was the best thing since sliced bread, I used to draw and paint and knit. I had a whole storage room in the basement absolutely full of stacks of papers and canvases, blankets, shirts, hooded sweatshirts and socks that I had made. But when Morton moved in, he made a point of dragging all of it out into the yard and burning it while I watched.
I had begged Julia to make him stop, let me keep just one of my artistic wares. I swore to her that they could be worth money, that if she would just tell him that they could be sold, they could make plenty of cash. But she didn't do anything.
The flames burned through the night, smoldering into the morning. The fire spread to what I hoped to be, destroying every dream and every chance to escape. When finally the smoke cleared, I was left a shell of what I once was, broken and beaten.
10/8
Mikaela helped me stretch a canvas today. It was huge, barely small enough to fit through the doorways here. Karly is going to take me to buy paint tomorrow. I can't wait to paint!
10/8
D. Jacobson is beginning to act more like a teenager and less like a mass of flesh. She actually cracked a smile for a moment this afternoon- a smile that lasted a full three minutes, I might add. I believe that the stimuli that we provide for her is working, even if only a little bit. Tomorrow I am asking K. Tally to have Jacobson paint without any reference. Darken the room, if we must. I am on to something, I know it.
~M. Daan
Delia stared blankly out the window, almost as though she was trying to figure out what the exact temperature of the autumn air was at that moment. As another young woman entered the room, however, she turned and made eye contact.
“Ready to hit the mall?” Karly, the other young woman, asked. Delia nodded slowly, then noticed a small boy by Karly's side. Karly smiled softly. “I hope you don't mind, but I figured that my son, Ashton, would enjoy the walk.”
“Hi!” the small boy said, as if on cue. Delia stood up and walked over to the little boy. She knelt down without hesitation and scooped him up in her arms, hugging him tightly. Karly, acting on instinct, went to pull the child away, but seeing the tears that were welling up in Delia's eyes, she stopped.
“Mommy?” Ashton asked, looking up at his mother as Delia held onto him.
“It's okay, sweetheart, she won't hurt you.”
After a few moments, Delia let go of the young boy, and, without wiping her eyes, stood up, took Karly's hand, and took Ashton's hand, and they walked down the long corridor and boarded the elevator.
10/9
Karly says that I reacted rather strangely to her son. I don't even remember meeting her son, to tell the truth. There was a little boy with us, I guess, today. She stuck me in the main room when we got back from picking out paint and paint brushes. Kept it dark in there except for a small lamp that attached to the top of the canvas. Told me to paint whatever I felt like, not what I saw.
She was rather disappointed, I think, when all I painted was a small black spider, hanging off of a leaf. I think she wanted me to paint the reason I am so quiet and so emotionless. But that wasn't what she told me to paint. She said “whatever I feel like painting,” so I did.
10/10
I was visited by a very unusual man today. He was a few inches taller than me, blond hair, blue eyes, thick-rimmed glasses, wearing a suit. He asked me questions about my sisters. Apparently Melissa and Joanie, my other two older sisters, have gone missing. He never showed me a badge or anything, so I doubt he was a cop. Even so, I didn't tell him much. Just that Joanie and Melissa didn't much like me when they still lived at home, and after mother died, they both took to drugs.
He also asked about mother and father. How mom died, when dad disappeared, the usual. I told him I didn't know anything. I was really young at the time, anyway. He commented that I sound like a female Ben Stein, who, by the way, I finally did look up via that search engine “goggle” or whatever, and I DO NOT SOUND LIKE HIM. At least I don't think so.
I watched a movie today. It was about a cannibal. A rather eloquent one, in fact. Made me laugh when we were served fava beans at dinner. David, the Bipolar Anorexic, has taken a turn for the worse, I guess. He wasn't at dinner. I saw him walking the halls, hooked up to some weird IV thing. I guess he decided he'd rather go the hard way than just eat.
I don't understand that disease, Anorexia. I searched that on the internet today, too. Apparently it usually afflicts the teenage girls about my age and younger. I don't understand how anyone could starve themselves like that. I eat like a hog, and I enjoy eating like a hog. I don't gain much weight, and I don't care about what weight I do gain. Before my incarceration here, I was a very active girl.
But I was weighed today, and since he resides on the 19th floor with me, he was weighed in the same group as me. He's only a few inches taller than me, his shoulders are the same width as mine, but I weighed in at least 60 pounds heavier than him. He smirked when he stood on the scale. The nurses chided him. He was down 10 pounds from when he came to stay here.
I almost felt self-conscious when I stepped on after him. He raised an eyebrow, noticing my weight. I looked at him, and he looked at the floor. I am to be put on a diet, since I have only been here ten days and I have already gained nearly seven pounds. Oh, the horror. I don't get what there is to be upset about, really. So I have a bit of extra fat hanging off of my hips. It isn't the end of the world, is it?
Delia fell asleep with her head resting against the keyboard of her desktop computer, a steady beeping noise emitting from the central processing unit. The night nurse gently moved the keyboard and replaced it with a pillow, at the same time covering Delia's shoulders with a quilt that had arrived with her things.
When she moved to turn the lights off, she noticed Delia stirring. Instead of the usual blank stare that met with anyone who encountered the teen, the nurse found herself looking at a smiling child. Returning the smile, she slowly pulled the door shut.
10/14
Sorry I haven't written for a while. I have been busy “being a kid,” so to speak. Really, I've just been setting my room up to look more like home. I actually do have much more room than I thought I did; one of my walls folds into another one, opening up a whole extra space that matches the space I had to begin with. I've been storing my non-art related supplies in that area.
I received a very high-quality color laser-jet printer last night, and have been printing off many of my doodles and the strange facts I have been finding on the internet pertaining to people who have been stricken with similar symptoms to what I have. It seems to be quite common, actually, for people to disconnect with their feelings and therefore be “emotionless,” only to observe incredibly short periods of any visible emotion.
I'm not sure if I really believe this stuff, or not. But in any case, I am making far better money doing the art thing than I ever did living with Julia and Mort. There was an envelope sticking under my door this morning, and inside it there was a note stating what items I had made had sold, and how much for, along with a wad of cash. It was kind of neat, knowing that people are actually finding things I made to be, well, good.
I stashed my money under my mattress. I shall have to invest in a safe next time I go to the mall. I am going to go to bed now, because I can feel my eyelids drooping as I type this.
10/16
I've been painting for nearly 36 hours straight. Three canvases and a mural on my wall with the window. Flowers and thorns and spikes and black figures; a little boy, a little girl with flowers in her hair. Myself, as a little girl.
I cut myself with a painting blade this morning. Barely even felt it until my blood started staining where I'd already painted. Blood on the field of daisies I'd worked on for seven hours. It almost looked perfect, the blood neatly contoured to the petals, looking as though it was dripping off of them. Of course, Jonathan was worried, and immediately dragged me over to the first-aid kit. I protested, telling him again and again that I was perfectly capable of judging when I was all right and when I wasn't.
He looked surprised and told me that my response was far more impassioned than he'd expected from someone with my unique, er, condition. Not only that, but apparently my voice is beginning to sound less Ben Stein-ish. Which, I suppose, is a good thing.
Tomorrow I have to go to an off-site clinic to have blood tests done, to make sure that it isn't some sort of virus that is causing me to act as I do. I wonder, though, why they didn't take me to get this stuff done when I was still a new arrival? I've been here half a month, already, anyway.
After my blood tests, I am supposed to walk two blocks south of the clinic to a coffeehouse where Julia wants to meet me for lunch, I guess. She probably has heard that I am actually making money off of my art, and wants to bug me for cash.
This is why I am bringing exactly $30, five of that in singles for bus fare from the coffeehouse back here. I am rather amazed (AN EMOTION OMG) that they are allowing me to ride the bus, on my own, from a location on the other side of town all the way back here, especially since they've made very little headway in their attempts to “cure” me, and I have not shown any outright signs of trusting them.
In reality, I am not even slightly tempted to run. There isn't really anywhere for me to go, after all. I guess finding Joanie and Missy would be a priority for me, but I don't know what these people would do to my stuff if I took off. For all I know, they could have a major bonfire using my stuff as kindling. And I rather like my possessions at this time.
10/17
Julia didn't try to get money from me, but attempted to get me to go home with her. I don't quite understand her motive, there. She's the one who sent me off to live at a MENTAL INSTITUTION. ALONE. Because her and her perfect boyfriend and her perfect daughter and my younger siblings were getting too cramped in the tiny shack we all were crammed into for years after mom died.
She brought a picture that rather confused me. It was a girl, me possibly, ages ago, with a newborn boy. The girl was looking, lovingly, at the baby, gently caressing his face with an index finger. It almost looked like it was taken in my old bedroom; the room that Mort and Julia had stolen from me when Mort moved in.
I caught a very brief glimpse of the back of the picture. All I saw were initials: 'DJ' and 'AJ.' But as far as I remember, none of the children she's plopped out had a first name that began with an A.
Delia stared at the last paragraph she had typed, silently, for a long time. A single tear traced a path down her slender cheek, hanging from her chin for a moment before falling to the floor with an inaudible splash.
The night nurse walked slowly through the hallway, tapping each door as she walked, warning that it was nearly lights out. She paused, noticing that Delia's door was cracked, a sliver of light seeping out into the hallway; a perfectly white line along the tile of the hallway.
Since the end of the first week she'd been there, Delia had always kept her door completely closed, locked, even. So the nurse was compelled to see what was going on.
She rapped her knuckles against the door four times, the sound ringing sharply through the air. “Delia?” she asked, as she slowly opened the door. “Deli-Oh, my God.” There, sprawled, between the bed and the desk, was Delia, face down in a pool of semi-dried blood. |
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