The Writers' Circle

The raw stench of disinfectant caught in my nostrils. The walls had been painted in the white wash a thousand times. Red, the walls should be red. Sleek, rich burgundy. I needed the colour; my head was draining of all its life, pushed into blankness, disinfectant and beep beep beep of machines. That minute sound, forever drilling into my head. It's keeping you alive they said. Beep beep beep wasn't giving me drugs and blood. It wasn't grabbing onto my body, my face, cutting, slicing. It was just beep beep beep. They said that if I had kept perfectly still I would be different. All this time, I should never have moved. Like a doll in a box, rigid smile, polished plastic. I would have been a doll in a bed, heavy bleached sheets covered up to my waist. If I had kept beautifully still I would have a face, a body, just snapped legs. Bruised to the point that they fall off when I walk out of the white wash room. But I had tried to move from my broken stillness, run from the sight of more and more bits falling off and pouring out onto the pavement. The lady who held my hand said she would only be a moment. She was sick and then she came back. That's when I tried to move and everything fell apart. I clawed at my face until it bled. I can only hope the machine will stop, beep beep beep. 

For a whole day nobody had known where I was. My doctor asks where I was going the day before. I didn't know what he meant. He asks what I was doing at the station; he pauses, when it happened. I tell him I was going to see a dead man. He thinks the drugs have swallowed up my brain. I was bringing flowers to that old, dead body a few stops down the line. The figure in my life that expected admiration but didn't deserve a drop of it. I wanted him to cherish me, to be overcome with contentment at the thought that his blood was my blood. When I thought about this I imagine all my torn veins, spread across the table like a tangled map. Afterwards I was glad I didn't make it. To his worthless patch of grass among all the others who had been snatched. But I would have gone if it meant I had a face. I could have cried, even though I was not sad, because now I do not cry, I cannot cry. My mother shrieked when she saw me, her tears grew into dramatic sobs. I could feel all the words she wanted to say to me, but she would never speak them. They were caught in the air, it is static and uncomfortable. Two months and I haven't heard a single word from my mother; I know she cannot tell me it will be okay. 

There is a man down the corridor. He builds me this little world where we are not the creatures that everybody else sees. I want to believe it. He needs to believe it. His brain is melted inside his head. He tells me when he gets out he is going to shoot his mate in the face, right between the eyes he says. I am not surprised at this statement as he boasts that he will shoot many people in the face, but this time his eyes are aflame with a sick hope that he can. He says his mate made a bonfire in his house at the stag night. I've heard about the stag night, everyone has. I didn't know the fire was deliberate. He says he read a poem about fire, it says that the flames lick you, but they ate him he tells me, they chewed him up until everything died. 

Everybody who I've met so far asks me what I am still doing here. I am confused because surely they know that the world is becoming more ignorant for every moment we stay in here. But your life is still intact. 
You've had visitors, friends, family, your girlfriend they argue. But only 2 ½ people came. My mother. My little sister. My girlfriend got half way down the corridor, came face to face with Tim Jones, and ran off. Tim Jones had eye sockets, like a jacko lantern before it is lit. I am hurt. I am betrayed. I am alone.

I am not embarrassed or ashamed. The councillor tells me to say this out loud. What we speak and what goes on inside our minds is never parallel. Everything and everybody builds their lives with lies. If this was untrue my doctor would tell me how my face makes his stomach turn, and the only way he can wash away the sin is to glaze his eyes with delusion. I am a case, in a filing cabinet, filled with echoes.  

My mother is back again. She strokes my arm, cautiously avoiding the stitches. By this point she has spoken to me, at first she spat out the words. Black phrases, writhing on the floor, sick with worry, and malice and all the cruel emotions a widow who was losing her son would face. I see this as a puzzle. I see it all as a puzzle. Trying to slot bits together that needed desperately to be apart. I stole someone else's blood; I stole skin and all these different pieces of my puzzle. All I can think about, while my mother is talking to me, patronisingly spelling out how she feels, and how I should feel, all I can think about, is the body on the table, chop, chop, chop, they go, a bit for the man in room 17, a bit for the woman in room 25, a bit for the child in room 3, bag it up, and shift it out.  
 
I have been here four months. The councillor is not worried like the others because he knows my life has fallen to pieces. He tells me to say how I feel by describing objects, tell me a story he says, like I am a child who has not quite figured out how the world turns. I imagine the beautiful vase my mother had in the hallway. It was the first thing you saw when you came in, a representative for the occupants of the house. The councillor nods. It was inherited and valued at a few thousand pounds. That is what my mother had been told by her mother, the original keeper of the delicate china. But when debt began to dwell too often in my mother's mind she took the vase to the pawn shop. It was our insurance. The councillor nods again. But it was a fake; she was offered £120 for it. When I came home from school it was in tiny pieces on the kitchen floor. Smashed into the ground. The councillor looks pleased but tries to hide this and asks me to explain. I say that my life is the vase, but it is only a fake, and now it's in a thousand tiny pieces. The story is elaborate, beautifully constructed and spoken just to uphold the councillor's stack of paperwork. He likes little metaphors, so I give him one.   

I feel like the others in this place. At first it was a sanctum to hide from all that was not disinfectant, blankness and beep beep beep of machines. It was a hole in which to crawl in a recover. Recovering had two meanings in this place. The first is being healed, stitched back together, making a flimsy hollow version of the person behind the hideous scars. Many were healed in this way, but their minds had been left behind. 
No amount of machines or doctors could take away the mental sickness that plagued you. Your brain is like a flower, rotting, slowly, until these white wash walls start to feel more like a cage than a sanctum. Some of them will never leave because the mirror holds too many fears, especially of themselves. This prison is closing around me, they think I am one of the positive ones but I just knew how to play it. It feels like the beginning when I needed colour and vibrancy. Calm was horrific, when all I wanted I wanted to do was walk out of this nightmare. 

I am packing today. I leave in her Ford Focus. I tell her I want to go to the station. She smiles at me, it is similar to when I was five and I asked if Father Christmas is real. She thinks there is nothing left of me. She stops for petrol. I slide into the driving seat, it has been a while but I remember. I grip the steering wheel; press my foot hard on the lever. Too hard, but I've got it now. I can here a woman screaming I hope its her, my mother, realising what I have done and what I am going to do. She thought it was all better; just keep taking your medicine she would say. Don't over do it. Don't strain yourself. But now, what was she thinking, what was she doing in the petrol station, credit card hand. I asked her, I told where I needed to go, but she wouldn't listen, she deserves this. I didn't want to miss my train, so I speed up. I know there is one a 10 o'clock. I have thought about it everyday for six months, one week and 
two days. I have the counted hours but that's not important now. I park and step out of the car. My mother has a ten pound note on the dashboard, so I take it. 9.42 am. I have 18 minutes until it will leave. This is the first time people stare. I cannot even describe it to someone who has not gone through this, but it amounts to more pain than every knife that has cut my skin. It feels like everything is pouring out again, in a disgusting black plague. I buy my ticket. They've changed the font. It used to be much better than this, not as fancy. I ask the ticket lady why they have changed the font. She calmly, quietly, like something is lodged in her throat, tells me my train leaves at 10, on Platform Two. She is terrified, I am a Frankenstein. They have a Starbucks here. I go in and order something to take away, it is cheaper that way. She gives me the brown paper bag and a muffin. I put the muffin in my pocket and poke two holes in the bag. I place it over my head. The girl who served me smiles and moves onto the next customer. Starbucks is busy today; she hasn't got time to be disgusted. 9.54 am. 6 minutes. The train crawls along the lines; lethargically it greets me and opens its doors. I sit down and wait until 10. I liked looking out of the window; I had not seen this amount of greenery in that place, only white, white wash, white clothes, white bed sheets, bleached over and over and over. The train started, I try to smile but I think it is lying over there; they will have cleaned it up now. Chucked it in the bin. When I get to the stop it is only a 5 minute walk. They placed the station near the graveyard so old women and men could easily visit their other halves, in a mahogany box, metres below. Only the finest wood for Brenda, only the grandest for our Bill. When I get there it is disgusting to think that there is only soil between me and him. I know why I never did this. There is a woman over there, she has obviously picked all of the black items out of her wardrobe, a big warning sign that she has lost someone, do not disturb. She has the flowers too, she's doing it properly. I did not bring any flowers. Some of them lying on the graves are beautiful, handpicked. Others are dying, wilting with the sorrow beneath them. I place the muffin on the slab.