/lit/ - Literature

[Op !01HI9JXepQ No.19034796]

The Ward doesn't exist. It can't be seen from the outside and the outside can't be seen from inside it. Except by vague intimations; a newspaper, a hope, a wish, even a dream. On the day I arrived, I was told it was a place of truth. What's contained is truth - The Ward.

It stands inconspicuously in a quiet Dublin suburb. Architecturally, it is inoffensive. Quaint even. Its walls are white and appeared to have been recently painted on the day of my admission. I had to squint when looking at it. Its luminosity obscured my vision like the madness I found myself in. It was an all-encompassing madness. A madness so profound that the very dimensions of reason would collapse like the laws of physics at the event horizon of a black hole.

The security guard sniffed loudly as I entered. His blue uniform fit him well and he wore a formidable set of keys on his waist. Antiquated, I thought, kind of like an old prison movie. He met my gaze and seemed undisturbed by it. I supposed he was used to it. The only indication that he indeed was aware of my judging glance was the awkward cough he expelled into his hand.

[Op !01HI9JXepQ No.19034801]

The nurse led me through the halls of the ground floor. The carpet looked like it was from a 1980's hotel foyer. It was impeccably clean despite the resemblance. At the end of the east wing was an elevator. It made the usual mechanical sounds and I entered swiftly. If I knew then what awaited me I would have grabbed the sharpest utensil I could find and hold the nurse hostage. The security guard would do nothing, he wasn't armed. Perhaps I would demand his keys and free every sorry soul in the building. We would go to the airport and hijack a Ryanair flight to South America. There we would establish a commune and live peacefully off the land. Maybe I would take a wife and have ten kids. That's what I would have done, but alas, I entered that elevator and watched my world disappear behind its closing doors.

The elevator ascended slowly up two floors. It did not have a mirror, which I quietly approved of. Why did elevators in shopping malls always have mirrors? Were some people that crippled with claustrophobia? I enjoyed confined spaces, perhaps a strange preference traceable to infancy, or even to my time in my mother’s womb. I was expelled from my first home. The Ward served as a return.

The nurse seemed giddier and giddier as we approached The Ward. Her smile was slightly demented and her eyes brightened but would not make contact with mine. We reached the door to the Ward.

[Op !01HI9JXepQ No.19034806]

My name is Charon,” said the young nurse, still avoiding eye-contact “and this is Ward B.” She paused as though to invite my worst paranoias. “It is a high security ward and homes about thirty patients, all suffering from acute mental health disorders”.

The door was thick and had a crude picture of a dog with three heads above it, probably an arts and crafts project by one of the inhabitants.

I was quickly rushed through the darkened ward, it being empty as it was midnight and everyone was probably sleeping or reading in their room. There were pillars with large mirrors running up the length of them. That, I decided, is where they kept the cameras. They had the usual ceiling cameras, but those, I assumed, were dummies. I looked into the mirror of one pillar and was sure I could feel telepathically the eyes of some spook staring at a monitor, smoke billowing up from his rolled cigarette, watching me and cataloging my every move. It had been that way when I was a kid, I suddenly remembered. The small room with the large mirror. I put lipstick on looking in that mirror and kissed it to leave my mark on it.

I was ushered into a back room which housed three padded cells. I felt a certain ominosity, as if they were sending me a message. The police sergeant had done the same. He strode past me in the station with one of those long vices used to pick up rubbish. He smiled at me and I knew the implication he was going for was that I was the rubbish, and he was here to clean me. The female police officer had acted exactly like the nurse. That’s the way of women, I thought.

[Op !01HI9JXepQ No.19034810]

Two men entered. One had the air of a doctor and the other seemed perhaps like the head nurse or something along those lines. A medical doctor pokes and prods at you with his instruments. He makes a diagnosis, refers you to a specialist if need be, doesn’t get to the root of you as a human having human experiences. A psychiatric doctor makes psychological incisions with his mental scalpel, opening compartments of your psyche to see what falls out. He crudely stitches you back together with pills he would never let his own children take. He sends you off, out into the world, chemically lobotomised. And this is infinitely preferable to the alternative; the dungeons of the past, littered with madmen in their own shit. The Ward, at the very least, was a sanitised dungeon.

After what seemed like endless questions, I was finally brought to where I would be sleeping. A room with a middle-aged man. He had grey hair and a greyish black beard. Beside him, on his nightstand, was the complete works of Shakespeare. I thought I could see one eye slightly opened, peeping at his new cellmate. Even when the lights were turned on he continued the facade. I was shown my bed. It consisted of a urine-proof blue mattress with no cover and a stiff looking pillow. The nurse, a male nurse, handed me a paper cup of water and four pills. He stood there quietly smirking, trying to convey that he was not leaving until I had taken the pills. I had no qualms and downed them, hoping they would get me buzzed. I handed him back the empty paper cup and fell back onto my piss proof bed, resting my head on the hard pillow. He started to leave but stopped at the door.

“This is a place of truth”, he said, turning the light off.

[Op !01HI9JXepQ No.19034879]

What think?

[Anonymous No.19035133]

Nobody in Dublin would describe Garda/the Guards as police officers

[Op !01HI9JXepQ No.19035176]

>>19035133
I'm not talking about the Garda though