XV | Someone Count
❦
We’re playing
hangman
in the study room
when Elliot walks in
accompanied by
two nurses.
One dozen.
‘Correct,’ I reply
and fill in the blanks with her answer.
They’re not
the same nurses
that followed me around.
Their uniforms
the male ones.
One of them has hazel eyes.
Elliot
sits in front of the computer,
the first patient I’ve seen
to switch it on.
He turns,
like he feels my gaze
on the back of his head,
but continues typing
his name
when the computer
asks for it.
It’s not Elliot.
He types:
MASON.
❦
Hey Fifi,
did you count?
Tammie’s tapping my
shoulder
violently now.
It hurts.
I turn away
from Elliot— or Mason—
whatever his name is
and look at the paper
Tammie’s flapping in my face.
She’s drawn
a cheshire cat’s smile
on the man getting hanged
and a speech bubble
with the words: HA HA HA
in it.
The smile on her face,
however,
is apologetic.
Hey Fifi,
did you guess the word?
As soon as I see it,
a shiver
goes down
my spine.
I take the pencil from her
and fill in the blanks
myself.
The nurses are watching
the computer screen
continuously churning out
404 PAGE NOT FOUND
for every URL
their charge
types
in the search bar.
They’re making no move to tell him
the Internet
doesn’t work
here.
Tammie folds the paper with her word and the laughing hanged man
and eats it.
Let’s go to the greenhouse.
‘Am I right?’
I follow her,
demanding.
‘Hey, Tammie!’
Up the square spiral stairs,
into the open sitting area
without anything to sit on.
Tammie prances into the greenhouse
without me
because
something’s
caught my eye.
The door
Next to Krishna’s.
The one that said
ELLIOT
this morning,
after the scream,
before the first note
of Moonlight Sonata.
Now it says
MASON.
Hey Fifi,
did you count?
❦
I count
the patients
I know.
There are always eight patients.
A chill
runs down
my spine.
Urei.
Raymond.
Li Wen.
Tammie.
Krishna.
Gavin.
Fatima.
Elliot.
Eight patients.
There are always eight patients.
With Mason,
that’s—
Tammie’s singing in the greenhouse:
Seven, eight! Lay them straight..
Nine, ten! A big fat hen..
I hear footsteps
on the stairs
and close the glass door
behind me.
Tammie smiles
apologetically.
Too loud!
I shush her.
A nurse walks by.
The same one
I saw this morning,
coming out of Elliot’s room.
She looks like
the pretty nurse,
(same hairstyle)
wearing a mask.
She enters
Elliot’s room with a pillow.
No.
That’s Mason’s room now.
Tammie takes the hangman paper
from her mouth,
dripping saliva onto the cold stone pathway.
Unfolded,
the word I filled out
on the blank dashes
is almost unreadable.
Smudged and half digested.
‘Ew, Tammie.’
She crushes the paper,
saliva squeezing through her fingers
like slime.
‘That’s gross. Stop it.’
Tammie tucks the paper
in the gap
between the two rowan trees.
What do you think
happened to your plastic knife?
When Tammie
brought up the two rules,
I thought she might be
making it up,
just her delusion
of how this asylum
works.
But it wasn’t.
That wasn’t what Tammie meant
at all.
These rules
were really
how this place
is run.
That high-pitched
unearthly scream
in the morning…
That was Elliot, right?
What happened
to him?
Tammie’s tapping my arm.
Grey eyes waiting patiently
forever.
Fifi, are you listening?
What do you think happened
to your plastic knife?
I take my time to respond.
(To be honest,
I’m a little spooked
by her.)
Do the walls have ears?
Is this a trap?
I’m not really sure
that Tammie isn’t with them.
so I say,
‘Ma’am Kaiser’s servants took it.
‘He’s become one with the walls.’
Mason came,
so someone had to go.
There are always eight patients.
In order
to stay alive,
we have to be
one of the eight patients.
❦
