I t's Waltraud Wagner at my door, the head of wardens in the Radcliffe Lunatic Asylum. Torturing me in the Mush Room pleasures her above all else. "Did you change your mind yet?" she blurts in her horrible German accent, reeking of cigarette smoke and junk food.
"What do you mean?" I tighten my fist around my single tear, squeezing it away.
"You've been unusually obedient for the past six days, confessing your insanity and such." She slaps her prod against her fleshy palm. "It's not like you," she remarks.
"I'm insane, Waltraud. I'm fully aware of it."
"I hardly believe you. How would an insane person know they're insane?" She is testing me. Admitting my insanity doesn't appeal to her. It rids her of reasons to fry me in the Mush Room. "People are kept in asylums because they aren't aware of their insanity. Their ignorance of their insanity endangers society. That's why we lock them away."
"Are you saying insane people who are aware of their insanity don't deserve to be locked away in asylums?" It's a nonsensical argument already.
"Insane people who know they are insane are smart enough to fool society into thinking they aren't," Waltraud replies. I blink twice to the confusing sentence she just said. "Think of Hitler, for an example." She laughs like a heavyweight ogre. Sometimes I think she is a Nazi. I was told she killed her patients in the asylum she worked for in Austria. But when she makes fun of Hitler, I am not sure anymore. "Or, in your case, you're admitting insanity to avoid shock therapy."
A twisty smile curves on my lips. Waltraud isn't that dumb after all. "That's a serious accusation, Waltraud," I say.
"It is an accusation," she retorts. "But it's hard to prove. Who'd believe me when I tell them you're an insane girl believing you're not insane, but pretending you are?"
"Such a mind bend ." I almost chuckle. Waltraud's misery is always my pleasure. "Have you ever read Catch-22 by Joseph Heller?" It's a book that tackles this kind of logic. I wonder if Heller was a Lewis Carroll fan.
"I don't have time to read books," Waltraud puffs. "Does it have pictures in it?"
"No, it doesn't," I say. Waltraud probably read Alice in Wonderland and is trying to provoke me. Anything to get me to do something foolish and deserve punishment in the Mush Room.
"What use is a book without pictures?" She snickers behind the door.
"It's a book that describes how something can't be proven until a previous thing is certainly proven. However, the previous thing can't easily be proven either, to put it mildly." I neglect her comment about a book without pictures.
"I don't understand a word you say." She truly doesn't.
"Think of a chicken and an egg. We have no way to know which came first."
"I don't understand that either," she puffs. "I hate chickens." I hear her scratch her head. "But I love eggs."
I wish I could drive her mad myself. Wouldn't it be fun to have her in my cell instead of me?
A scream interrupts our ridiculous conversation all of a sudden. I have been hearing this for a few days now. It's a patient girl pleading to be spared from the Mush Room. It's probably Ogier torturing her. The Mushroomers in the other cells pound on their bars, demanding the pain to end. The screams have tripled since I've stopped being sent to the Mush Room. Waltraud and Ogier have been compensating for my absence with too many other patients.
"Why all the torturing?" I ask Waltraud. I'd like to scream in her face and punch her with oversized gloves filled with needles and pins. But the inner—relatively reasonable—voice stops me. If I want to forget about my madness, and if I want to keep avoiding the pain of shock therapy, I'd better keep to myself. When I walk next to a wall, I want people only to notice the wall.
I am not here to save lives. It's not true. Why should I care?
"It's not torture. It's interrogation," Waltraud explains. "A patient escaped the asylum recently while you were locked in here. We are authorized to use shock therapy to get confessions from the patients neighboring his cell."
I jump to my feet and pace to the door, sliding open the small square window to look at her. "Are you saying someone actually escaped the asylum?" I can't hide the excitement.
"You look so happy about it, Alice," Waltraud sneers. "Come on. Show me you're mad. Give me a reason to send you to the Mush Room. You want to exchange places with the poor girl inside?"
My face tightens instantly. I spend my days and nights in my creepy cell, safe from Waltraud's harm—and safer from my own terrible mind. I need to learn to control my urges.
Be reasonable, Alice. Last week was all in your head. You've never been to the Vatican, the Grote Markt in Belgium, or to Westminster Palace in London. If you want proof, it's easy. Think of why the Pillar never sent for you again. Why Fabiola never entered your cell again. Why your sisters and mother never visited again. It's better not to care about the escapee as well. Even if you escaped, there is no one out there waiting for you outside.
"Play the 'sanity' game all you want," Waltraud says. "Sooner or later, your brain will be mine to fry." She laughs. An exaggerated laugh, the way they portray an evil person's in Disney cartoons. I am really starting to wonder why she isn't locked in a cell, unless she is like Hitler, knowing he's mad and persuading the world otherwise. "Now get ready," she demands.
"For what?" I grimace.
"It's time for your break," she tells me. "You're rewarded for your good behavior: a ten-minute walk in the sun."