Authors: Denise Mathew
Now, many years later, everything about the facility was familiar. She knew every board, every brick, every piece of the building that had enclosed her since the day she had killed her parents.
CHAPTER 3
“Everything is an illusion,” Kaila said.
“What?” Norm scratched the sparse stubble patch on his chin. It never seemed to get any thicker no matter how many days he went without shaving. This fact seemed odd to Kaila since he was twenty-two, long past puberty.
“Everything is an illusion,” she repeated. “I don’t really understand it exactly other than whatever that is not happening right in this moment doesn’t exist because there’s only now.”
“You’re crazy,” Norm said matter-of-factly.
“Of course I am, why do you think I’ve been in Wildwind all these years. But just because I’m crazy doesn’t mean I don’t know things. The person that wrote that everything is an illusion, sat on a park bench for years until he got enlightened, and they call him a spiritual guru. So maybe I’m an undiscovered authority too, maybe even a guru.”
Norm nodded, considering. “Yeah, maybe. I dunno.”
He ran his slender fingers across the blackish-purple bruise running the length of his jaw. Banana yellow now infiltrated the blue. Kaila stared at his bruise for a long moment before she spoke, marveling once again at the perfection of the human healing process that mended without being told to do so. What was even odder about Norm’s bruise was that it was healing in a way that made it look almost like the number 8 or maybe even the symbol for infinity.
“Is it true that you had sex with a dead girl?” Kaila said.
As was her routine she changed subjects with jarring speed. Norm’s mouth worked as he tried to formulate a sensible response.
“What the fuck Kaila, why are you asking me about that shit?” he said.
“What’s wrong with asking about that shit?” Kaila asked.
Her face was as innocent as that of a five-year-old who had just asked why the sky was blue.
Norm raked a hand through his muddy brown hair, forcing the unwashed locks to stand a little higher on his head. Like many of the patients of Wildwind, Norm wasn’t much for personal hygiene, always waiting for the forced long walk to the showers that would eventually happen when the staff realized that he wasn’t doing his part.
“Because I want to forget it, it only happened when I was working the night shift and I was on Bath Salts. That stuff makes you see things that aren’t real. I’ll never do that shit again it’s too fucked up.”
He placed his palm against his heart.
“I honest to God thought that those girls were alive, you know just a little less responsive than I was used to but…”
Kaila broke into laughter that was childish and natural. Like most everything else in her life, she didn’t filter any of her emotions, allowing whatever she felt to fill her whole being, consume her in the moment where only she and that emotion existed. It was something that got her into more trouble than she wanted, but also brought her to a perfect place of absolute purity that few people ever felt.
“And you call me crazy?” she finally managed to say through gasping giggles.
“You are fucking crazy Kaila, and I have no idea why I even bother talking to you, you don’t get anything about life. You’re a lifer here in Wildwind and unlike me, you’re never going to ever get out of this shit box.”
He drew in a deep breath, his face going rouge with anger. Kaila stopped laughing and watched him intently, smiling at how once again she had predicted how the future would unfold. Long before it had happened she had seen this event, and how Norm would react so venomously to her question. All humans had a trigger, a button you could press and then things would happen, amazing things that she could incite with just a word, or two.
“I’m amazing,” she yelled, leaping to her feet. “I know the future, I know you.” She shook her finger in front of Norm’s thin nose. He matched her moves, lurching up. His 5’3” frame meant his head just reached Kaila’s chin, he pushed in closer to her until his chest was pressed against her stomach then tilted his head up, glaring at her. He was more than aware that he had just crossed a boundary that left him in no-mans-land; a smack to the head or some part of his body would surely follow.
Kaila in an unexpected move placed her huge hands on either side of his gaunt face, she leaned in and took his thin-lipped mouth in hers. For a fraction of a second Norm didn’t know what to do; his mouth remained stiff and unresponsive. But when he realized what she was doing he went on tiptoes, parted his lips, and kissed her deeply. His hands found the swell of her hips, gliding up and down the curves. To Kaila it felt like scrabbling spider legs, this time hoards of dandy long-legs, crawling on her, invading her body, seeking entry into her mind.
That’s when things went wrong. Kaila lifted him up as if he weighed nothing, which was close to true since he weighed exactly ninety-nine pounds. Not exactly a feather, but not much of an effort for Kaila who was exceptionally strong either. Before he could protest she had him high above her head like a weight lifter in a clean and snatch.
“Don’t do it Kaila,” Pauline raced toward her.
Her hair flew away from her face revealing the scar that was usually hidden. Though Kaila had seen the star more times than she could count, right at that very moment she thought she understood with perfect clarity what it meant, why the scar was in the shape of a star. Norm was back down on the floor and released so rapidly that he swayed in the space where she had deposited him.
She snatched up her computer, racing to the Activity Room. She found the place deserted, most people were still performing their morning rituals, taking their meds, washing their bodies and all the other various things humans did like clockwork every single day of their existence. No animal was as programmed to the norm than the human race.
In the morning, before anyone stepped into the space, there was a quiet energy that swirled around Kaila. As if an explosion had happened and this was the silence that had followed. The room was the very antithesis of an explosion; everything was in order and in its place, games in boxes, chairs pushed beneath desks, carpets vacuumed, windows polished and dust removed from all surfaces. Still, Kaila could never shake that particular analogy from her mind.
She sniffed in the scent of familiarity, of lemon furniture polish and cleaning products, but also something few people could detect, the smell of people and life, and the sunshine that filtered in through the half dozen windows. Even the chess pieces had a unique smell of warm plastic. You only had to open your senses completely to notice.
Kaila locked on the space that was hers. Another place where her life took form and meaning. Though nobody actually mentioned it, there was an unspoken rule that most patients followed. The rule said that the blonde wooden desk and matching chair that sat beneath a large window on the far side of the room belonged to Kaila. And even if there were not enough seats to go around like when they had Bingo night, Kaila’s chair remained where it was, as if fixed in place to the floor that it rested upon.
She tugged the worn chair from beneath the desk, taking a moment to graze a hand across the wood that was made smooth from years of use. She imagined a perfect replica of her very own derriere imprinted on the surface.
She slipped onto the chair that was hard-backed and to most people uncomfortable, but to Kaila discomfort was a state of mind. Buddhist monks who practiced their meditations acknowledged this to be true, and instead of responding to the unease, they identified it, then let it go. She knew that mentality to be true; because when she sat in this seemingly insufferable chair she felt no aches, no pains, no signs that she was not reclined on a cloud of air. Kaila forgot what it was like to suffer, and was there in that moment completely unburdened by anything unpleasant.
She took her seat in the chair, prying her laptop computer open so it was ready for her fingers to caress the keys. It waited patiently for her to bring it to life. She took a fraction of a moment to stare at her reflection in the glass window before her. It had always fascinated her that when the lighting was just right as it was right then, she could see two completely different visions like a hologram that changed with every angle.
In one gaze she saw the winding road that led to Wildwind and the chain link fence that sliced through the road, preventing people from entering or leaving at their will. Instead, entry or exit from Wildwind was controlled by a man or woman who sat day and night, guarding the gates to Hell or Paradise depending on who you spoke too. For those who were locked within the gates, Wildwind might have been considered Hell, because no sentient being appreciated being held prisoner. On the other side of the fence, for the family and loved ones who were partly or wholly responsible for placing their loved ones within the confines of the facility, it was a Paradise where they would get the help they needed. This notion was necessary because if they admitted the truth to themselves, that the patients inside were in truth, caged like animals in a zoo, it would prove to be unbearable.
When Kaila shifted her eyes slightly, her face came into view. She studied her reflection and her wild hair that was long and unkempt and always looked as if she had just blown in from a windstorm. She loved her hair, because it reminded her of the autumn leaves that fell from the mature maple trees that encircled Wildwind. People, who didn’t know her, often asked her if she achieved that particular color from a bottle because it was so very unique and different. There was no dye in her hair; it was exactly as she had remembered her mother’s hair had been. Kaila’s blue eyes had come from her father. Every time she gazed into her eyes she saw him there, staring at her, questioning her, asking her things that she never had an answer to. She wasn’t sure if her memories were truth or stories she had constructed, only that they were all she knew.
Now her hair and eyes were the only reminders of the people who had been her parents, but who were no longer on this earth. They had long ago returned to the universal energy; she had been responsible for sending them there. There was a beauty in sending them away, back to the place where they sprouted from the earth, yet sometimes Kaila couldn’t see the beauty, instead she saw the horror that the others insisted was true. Because what right did one human have to take another persons life…
Kaila shook her head, clearing the memories that would sidetrack her away from the whole reason she was there in the first place. She had discovered it, the meaning of Pauline’s scar and needed to write it all down. As was the case she knew if she didn’t record her thoughts exactly at the moment they developed, they would be like a breath of air that you pulled within your lungs but as soon as you exhaled it was gone, and you would never ever breathe that very same breath again.
Kaila waited for the few minutes it took for the computer to boot up, practicing patience she almost didn’t feel capable of. A few taps later brought her to the place that was her other home, the virtual space where Trillian lived when she wasn’t inside Kaila’s head.
Kaila had started the blog on March 1
st
, on her nineteenth birthday, six years earlier. She had spent a long while setting it up so it was perfect, even picking a picture from the internet that embodied Trillian’s personality absolutely. There had been a bit of a tug of war on the picture that had been used though. Kaila wanted someone young and Trillian someone old. In the end they had settled on somewhere in the middle, a woman with a dark bob that was silvering at the temples. She wore round-framed spectacles perched at the tip of her slightly large nose and had a smile that Kaila compared to Leonardo da Vinci’s Mona Lisa’s grin.
By all accounts Trillian’s blog had been a success. Of course there were the detractors, faceless people who tried to bully her by posting what they felt to be derogatory comments about her sanity, and lack thereof, as if it was a slight to her mentality.
Knowing that you were in fact crazy made their assumed barbs nothing more than black squiggles on a sea of white. Despite not finishing her last post because of the Norm incident, she had already received twenty-five comments. Most were from people who were regular followers, people who seemed to think that she walked on water, and that Trillian knew all. Kaila knew these kinds of people, the ones who wanted her to give them something that they already had, because how could you give someone knowledge about a world that we all lived in. How could anyone fill another person’s need to be swaddled in peace?
Kaila didn’t spend any time reading the comments because getting lost in another’s words was what stopped her own words from flowing.
Today, in the vastness that is life, I have found the key to something that has puzzled me for some time, but as in anything that we don’t know the answer to, the solution comes when we least expect it, in the mundane that is all around us. There is a star in my world; it comes to me at any time of the day and night. A symbol that surfaces like an oil slick on an ocean, left behind by some catastrophic event caused by mans need to own, possess and use all the resources that our planet so readily provides. But there is beauty in that slick, when the sunlight shines just right, something miraculous happens, a rainbow appears as if a message from the universal collective, that there can be beauty in tragedy, because it is in those moments that we are at our lowest, in the pits of our reserves when hope is so far away from us, that we come together as a group, we are one, working to save that which we have destroyed. Striving to undo what has brought us to the brink of despair and devastation.