...

It had been a month since Ben and Vivien saw their daughter. Though they both worked at the asylum, neither had been permitted to see her, so her appearance in the visitation room was a shock. Ben didn't even recognize her at first. She was so underweight and bedraggled, she looked like a homeless person shuffling up in that baggy asylum dress.

Her hair was stringy and she hadn't bothered to brush it back from her face. Vivien quickly did and was worried when she saw the dark circles under Violet's eyes. "Oh, sweetie," she breathed and had to resist the urge to hug her. Visitation rules required patients keep a certain amount of physical distance from visitors.

"Vi?" Ben said, sitting forward.

He almost rose but Violet slipped away from her mother and dropped into a chair at the table before he could. She used her fists to prop her chin and peered at her parents.

"Hi," she said, a smile touching the corner of her mouth. It felt like longer than a month to her. It felt like a year. A lifetime.

Her parents both reached for her and she grudgingly lowered her hands so they could each take one. She wanted to be happy to see them but she wasn't. She didn't know why. It wasn't their fault that they couldn't visit sooner. If anything, it was hers for not following the asylum's arbitrary rules better. Maybe it was the drugs fueling the apathy.

"The doctor said you're making great progress," Ben said encouragingly as he stroked her hand.

"Great," Violet said. "In no time they'll have me sane and ready to stand trial."

Her parents exchanged a glance then Vivien tried to smile. "That probably won't happen. The courts don't want to put a teenage girl in jail. If you follow the program, chances are, they'll just give you some sort of probation. Outpatient care—"

Violet gave a short laugh. "Just what I want to do with my life: Be Briarcliff's off-site slave. I've seen how that works. No, thank you." She pulled her hands away and folded her arms.

Her parents looked at each other again. Then Ben said: "Sweetie, we don't have a lot of options. You want to get out of here, don't you?"

It was meant to be a rhetorical question but she answered it anyway. "What if I don't?"

Her question was impulsive; she didn't want to stay in Briarcliff. But she also didn't relish the idea of living at their beck-and-call on the outside either.

Ben could sense her challenging him and opted to back off. "If you don't then... you don't. But I'm pretty sure you'd rather be sleeping in your own bed and wearing your own clothes."

Violet pressed her lips together briefly. He was too good at this. "I don't want to be here," she relented after a moment. "It's awful. I don't know how either of you can stand to work here. There's lots of good people here—innocent people!—and the staff here treat them like shit."

Both of her parents had plenty of their own experiences to back up what their daughter said and couldn't dispute her assessment. Talking about it openly made Vivien nervous and she glanced over at the guard at the door. He was looking at a magazine.

"All the more reason to work really hard on getting out of here," Ben said encouragingly, hoping to motivate his daughter with her own passion.

"You don't get it, dad," Violet said emphatically; loud enough to draw attention from the guard. "I'm not like you. I can't just.. leave this place and pretend like I didn't see the shit that happens here." She noticed the guard watching then and leaned in, lowering her voice but not the emphasis. "These people have to pay for what they're doing to the patients they're supposed to be helping."

"That's something we should talk about outside of the hospital," Vivien said, nodding her head to further reinforce the point.

"There'll be time for that later," Ben added, not wanting to give Violet more fuel for her ire. "Right now you need to focus on doing what your doctor tells you. Can you do that for me, Vi?"

The teen sent him a flat look. He had that puppy dog face on, the sad blue eyes face that melted everyone; even her, to a degree. She hated that he could do that.

"Yeah," she grouched. "Fine. Whatever." Then something occurred to her and she lost the attitude. "Hey. Do you guys think you could send me some of those little spiral notebooks and pencils? Like. Golf pencils. Small. So they're easy to put in my cupboard."

"Sure, honey," said Vivien. "I'll send some up as soon as I get home."

"Time's up," the guard announced.

The Harmons said their goodbyes. Despite her surliness, Violet got a little watery-eyed when it came time to let the guard escort her back to the ward. When the ward's heavy iron door squealed shut behind her, a weight settled on her spirit. She was back in the land of midnight bed checks and communal showers.

No matter what the paperwork said, Violet knew she was in prison.

—

"What'll you think will happen?" Tate asked.

He and Violet were in his room, sitting on the floor on the far side of the bed. She had sought him out after her meeting with her parents, in need of distraction. It wasn't private but it sort of felt that way. Tate had the zoetrope and was fitting his latest cartoon into the spindle. She had told him all about her visit.

"I don't know," she said. She was working on a cartoon of her own, drawn with a nub of a pencil she'd swiped from art therapy. "I don't get the feeling they're anxious to let anybody go. Which is stupid, as crowded as this place is."

"Doctor Thredson said something about work release or something but it sounded a lot like that one plumber guy," said Tate. He gave the zoetrope a test spin and smiled when the animation looked like it should.

"I think he was an electrician," Violet corrected. "But I know what you mean. I don't want to be some slave to their fucked up system. I told my parents that."

Somewhere down the hall, someone started wailing like they were being beaten. Both teens fell silent briefly, assessing whether it might be tied to a potential threat to them. When the sobbing faded away, they stirred again.

Tate handed her the zoetrope. "I wouldn't mind working for Doctor Thredson," he said. "But not like that."

Violet put down the pencil nub so she could take the old fashioned toy. She gave it a spin and looked through the slits as they whizzed by. A raven flapped by on the strip of paper, black wings pumping up and down. It would have been elegant but for one detail.

"Is it... pooping?"

Tate grinned and both cheeks dimpled. He looked proud. "It was bored just flying. It wanted to tag something."

"Well," Violet said, unwittingly nodding like her mother did when she didn't understand something Violet did but wanted to support her. "It's different."

"What did you make?" Tate asked, peeking over at her paper.

"It's not done yet," she responded. "It's going to be Santa flying across the sky in his sleigh." She quirked a crooked smile. "He won't be pooping on anyone."

Tate laughed and that made her laugh a little too.

...

Author's Note:

True horror story: There were asylums back in the mid-50's to mid-60's that had weird work-release programs. Patients were released who shouldn't have been in the sanitarium to begin with. They often had skills the asylum found useful, so they made it part of the release requirement that the patient check in regularly and hold a job at the asylum. Some patients fled the state after a couple of weeks but some, including an unfortunate electrician who was never paid, were stuck serving the hospital for the rest of their lives.

Next time: Exorcising demons and outing snitches. Fun times!