XCII | Some Time
❦
I’m remembering
all the names
I’ve forgotten,
all the faces
I’ve forgotten,
their screams, their blood, their dead eyes.
Not everything.
Just enough
to know,
to be horrified.
All the patients.
They didn’t leave.
They were killed.
I’m gagging
from the smell,
from the shock,
from the heat.
The room’s gotten darker now.
The smoke
clouding the entrance
of the studio room
is thickening.
It’ll be too dark
to see anything
without Tammie’s glowing grey eyes.
She’s hopped off the bed
now,
walking through the sea of
cupboards and leotards
to my side.
I’ve just opened up
the next pandora’s box.
There should be
no more
dead people left.
The leotards float
like paper
from my hand,
drifting
like confetti
to the floor.
Queenie.
Her body hasn’t decomposed yet.
I can easily make out
the features that identify her.
Her bright eyes are
open,
her hair dangling
like seaweed
from a life buoy.
There’s a toothbrush
sticking out of her chest.
A bloody hole
where her heart
should be.
I don’t understand.
Tammie behind me
pulls out
the toothbrush.
The end without the brush
is broken,
a jagged,
sharp plastic point.
I stare at
the makeshift weapon
numbly.
Tammie points
at the cupboards stretching out
into the darkness.
Her head tilts
sideways
again.
Softly this time.
More human.
I must have imagined
the creaking movement
earlier.
‘Who…’
And Tammie
hands me
the bloody toothbrush.
The blood
congealing
on the jagged end
isn’t dry.
So now I’ve got
Queenie’s blood on my hands.
❦
It doesn’t take a genius
to guess
what exactly
lies
inside the other cupboards.
The other patients.
There are,
after all,
six other patients
left
in this asylum
aside
from the two
of us.
The cupboards
further inside
the room
are probably
patients from before
I came.
What are you going to do now, Fifi?
The shock is all-consuming.
But the question
I find myself
thinking about
most
is why.
I’m staggering back to the older corpses,
searching for life.
(There’s none.)
Smoke and water
begin flooding
the studio.
I reach Asher.
His face is grey in the darkness.
With Tammie close by,
blue, purple—
his lips bloodless.
Asphyxiation.
I think of that
somehow.
(I’m not an expert.)
I wouldn’t know.
Back to the first corpse.
Elliot.
The first patient
who disappeared
after my arrival.
Something white
is protruding
from his neck.
There’s gunk smeared on it now
but I recognise it.
Tammie
giggles.
She recognises it too.
She puts her mouth
to my ear.
The smell of vomit overtakes me for a moment.
I know what you did
with the plastic knife.
Something splashes
on the floor.
I feel wet and grainy
things
beneath my feet.
Water.
Ash.
And then there’s
plastic knives.
Broken
toothbrushes.
Paintbrushes.
I’m stepping
on decomposing flesh,
human bones,
eyeballs, lips, foreheads.
The smell of blood,
the smell of ash.
There’s
pain.
Lots and
lots of
pain.
❦
