Visions in Darkness

Make the screaming top. Make the screaming stop. Make the screaming stop. Make the screaming top. Making the screaming stop. Make it stop, make it stop!

I tried to shut out the people in my head, that weren't in the cold, black, silent room I sat in now. I tried to stop seeing my mother being beaten by my father. I tried not to hear the screaming that wasn't really there.

The vision in my mind ended abruptly, with my mother lying on the wood floor with a bleeding lip. This vision would become true in approximately 12 hours, 32 minutes, and 54 seconds. I hated knowing this. I hated myself for what was wrong with me.

I was never going to watch Cynthia grow up. I couldn't be there to comfort her when our mother would be murdered in cold blood 22 months from next Tuesday. I was never going to meet the love of my life, and I was never going to get married. I was never going have a child of my own. I was never going to sit on a porch surrounded my grandchildren. I was never going to live a happy and wonderful life.

Instead I was going to die here, in this silent cold wet, black, room. One day my supervisor, who shoved food in my cell 3 times a day and undo my stray jacket, would find me lying dead and alone. I would be cold to the bone, I would have no heartbeat, and most of all—thankfully—no visions.

I hated the visions. These terrorizing vicious visions were going to be my demise. They were the reason I was in this room, strapped into a jacket that tied my arms around myself, with no bed and only a toilet. I wasn't even sure there was a proper door.

I was just locked in here after the nurse checked me for disease and cut off my long black hair. I hadn't stepped outside the room since. I hadn't spoken a word since, or heard a word spoken. Except in my head. The only interaction I had with another person was when the nurse would come in without letting light in to undo my stray jacket for eating. I remembered the day my father and mother sent me here. We lived in Biloxi, in a small, quant house.

I was now in an asylum north of Philadelphia.

"Mary!" My father shouted at me as he watched my eyes glaze over and unfocused. He knew I was seeing something.

I saw a girl cutting my hair. My long black hair falling over my chest. The hair, looked so short I looked like my cousin John.

The sight of me disappeared and I looked up to see my mother looking anxiously down at me and my father shaking with anger. I looked to the stairs to see my dear, baby sister—only 7 years old—sitting on the stairs, tears coming to her eyes. They were rimmed in red, and her plump perfect cheeks were shiny. The poor girl was crying. She hated when our parents were angry with me.

"Yes?" I asked, turning back to my father.

"That is enough!" He shouted.

"They come out of no where Papa! I can not control them!" I said quickly.

Defending myself was the wrong thing to do. My father's face deepened in colour, and I cringed as his course hand struck my face. My eyes watered at the pain, and the flesh on my cheek burned from the hit.

My mother simply watched him hit me. Not so much as wincing letting herself wince because she knew it would be the wrong thing to do. She loved me but she thought I was as much of a freak as my father, if not more. They were embarrassed to have me as a daughter now..

"That's is it! I cannot tolerate you anymore. You are wrong in the head! The devil possesses you! You are wrong in the head! You are unstable!" He shouted at me, saliva spewing out of his crooked yellowing teeth. He grabbed my arm and his fingers overlapped around them. I was small for a 15 year old girl. Cynthia nearly 9 years my junior was only a few inches shorter than myself. My father towered over me.

He wrenched me to my feet and dragged me to the door.

"Where are you taking her?" Cynthia cried. She ran to my and wrapped her arms around me and started pulling. I put up no fight. I knew I was being sent somewhere where the mad people went. Only I knew I wasn't mad. I just saw the future.

"Away from here!" he spat. "Away from you!"

"NO!" Cynthia screamed. "She is my sister! She is your daughter! She can't leave!"

I suddenly had a vision of Cynthia in a white dress, smiling, and kissed a man with blonde hair and black eyes. He was very handsome. I realized they were getting married. When she walked by my father and young woman—who were smiling proudly with their hands clasped together—she glared and averted her attention away from them. Her behavior confused me . . .

I gasped when I felt my father's hand tighten around my numb arm and him strike my face again.

"She is no daughter of mine." He said simply, and cruelly. He was grimacing so terribly it scared me. I felt as if I was having a glimpse into his soul, and it was a nasty one. "Come one. Alice, I will call you when I am on my way home."

I looked to my mother, and she was only staring at my blankly. I wondered if she was going to miss me. The thought of that made tears run down my face.

"Please. I will be good. I will try to control the visions. Please, don't send me away." I begged her. I watched as her serene mask fell, and all the pain and shame showed in her beautiful face. She just shook her head once and looked away. Cynthia was sobbing as she watched this. I begged again. "Please."

And then they were gone. All went black. The next thing I knew I was being stripped to my bare body, and all my clothes being stuffed into a furnace. A lady in white took a hose from of the walls. I noticed that the walls were white, and tiled. She turned the hose on and freezing water shot out and lashed at my naked body. I gasped at the temperature, and watched as the women stood 10 feet away, soaking me. I tried to shield myself, form the pain of the cold, but all I got was wetter.

Suddenly the water disappeared and a nurse came and bent down in front of me. She grabbed my legs and spread them 12 inches apart.

"Stay still." She snapped as I squirmed, and I watched as she took out something that looks like a giant spoon. The next thing I knew the object was gone and pain jolted all through my body. Then the pain disappeared again and the spoon reappeared. I realized what just happened, and whimpered like a dog.

Everything went black again. Light reappeared as I watched the women who had tortured me with water and stuck the metal spoon into my body, cutting my hair with long sheers. My hair fell, and I cried as I watched. This was what I had seen just before my father had brought me here. My hair was uneven, choppy and looked like a bear mauled it. I felt as it was cut further down until it was only a light fuzz atop my head. My eyes were blood shot and purple bags around them made me look like a raccoon. The lady then stood me up and marched me down a hall, and we stopped in front of a wall that said 89. I didn't see how she did it but the wall slid away and behind it was black. She pushed me in. It happened so fast . . .she just yanked the door back to where it was before. Before I could protest, she was gone.

I felt tears roll down my cheeks, and I sobbed away. I hadn't seen any light since then. No natural light that came from the sun. I only saw in my head.