I cannot believe it.
But then I suppose I should wonder why, all things considered, I had not wound up at one of these places already.
It is the Oberbayern Psychiatrische Klinik (Upper Bavarian Psychiatric Hospital), within walking distance from the Austrian border near Salzburg, the same place where my Onkel Wolfgang had been taken to on nearly a daily basis back when he was a professor at Frankenstein University, at least until he was fired for that exact reason.
Because I have stopped struggling with confinement, the police free me from the straitjacket and walk me behind the bars to the building's chilled interior.
The first thing they do is remove all valuables - coins, electronics and objects that might choke or puncture me - from my shell, bag it up in a paper bag with my name on it, and lock it up in a safe.
Then I am brought to a doctor's office. After a nurse takes my blood pressure, I am seen by the doctor, who is a thin, balding human with round black-rimmed glasses who speaks Central Bavarian dialect.
"So you are Ludwig von Koopa, is that correct?"
"Prinz Ludwig von Koopa," I correct him.
The doctor scribbles some notes over his clipboard. "Delusions...of...grandeur..."
"So, Mister von Koopa, are you hearing voices?"
"No."
"Do you feel suicidal?"
"No."
"Do you feel like you want to hurt anybody or yourself?"
"No." Under normal circumstances, these questions would be very offensive to ask. Even now I feel offended at being asked such questions.
"So, do you know why you were sent here?"
"I, uh, threw my brother."
"And why did you throw your brother?"
"He was the only weapon I had handy."
"And why would you use your brother as a weapon?"
"Somebody was behind me."
"Was this somebody an actual person?"
"Yes."
"Was this person holding a weapon of some sort or in any way threatening to hurt you?"
"I... think..."
"You think."
"...well..." I do not wish to get into the real reason why I was afraid of this person.
"Are you on any medications?"
"No."
"Have you ever been on any medications?"
"...a few when I was younger... for ADHD and behavior management, but the psychiatrist said I didn't need them anymore..."
"Have you ever taken Zarcolex?"
Great. Already trying to push pills down my throat.
"No, what is that?"
"It's supposed to calm you down so you'll feel better and reduce your rage tendencies."
Euphemistic terminology for the effects of antipsychotic sedatives. "No thank you."
"Just try it."
"I-I have a history of adverse reactions to antipsychotic medications in the past..."
"Do you have the documentation?"
"...no..." Truth is, my issues with antipsychotic medications have NOT been documented.
"Well, please take the Zarcolex. It is the safest and mildest that we've got, and it will help you to feel better."
"Fine..." I grudgingly place the soft yellow tablet into my mouth.
"Just hold it under your tongue and let it dissolve for a minute or two..."
"You do realize that I am nominated for the Frankenstein Prize, and I have to be back there by tonight."
"I'm afraid that going back to the university tonight is not an option."
"But I don't want to miss out on winning the award!"
"You won't. It is not uncommon for Frankenstein students and faculty to be sent here for psychiatric treatment, so the university has made it their policy to delay the awarding of the prize should one of the nominees become a patient here. As a matter of fact, we have actually had a patient here who was a nominee and had stayed here for the day that the prize was supposed to have been awarded, and this patient actually won the prize that year."
Who else would that be but my Onkel.
"Well, please tell me that I will be out soon..."
"Just relax and take it easy, Mister von Koopa. Think of it as a vacation. You seem like a very intelligent and ambitious young man, and you are probably over stressed. Your brain probably needs a rest, that's all."
"My brain does not need a rest! My brain never takes a rest! And even if it did, this is hardly the appropriate place to have such a vacation!"
"Here, let me show you to the ER where you will be staying with the other patients on suicide watch."
He leads me to an overly sanitized common room that is barren except for some cafeteria-style tables, hard plastic seats shaped like easy chairs but far less comfortable, magazines that are probably outdated and limited to material about housekeeping and gardening, and an oversized television set displaying the news from that one channel that repeats the same news all day long, placed behind a glass window so that the patients cannot turn it off or change the channel. Oh and there are doors to the patient's bedrooms, to the bathrooms, and to the kitchen, which is a tiny room with a refrigerator and cabinets that can be seen through the window where the television is kept behind. And a window to a barren backyard with three-meter high brick walls surrounding it. The air is cold, colder than the air outside, even under shade from the sunshine, probably due to air conditioning, as though the management believed in some medieval myth that cold air is good behavioral treatment for the mentally deranged.
This is worse than I thought. Worse than the stories Onkel had told me. Worse even than that wretched Happy Homes Children's Center that my siblings and I were forced to stay at the time CPS got nosy about the familial affairs of the Koopa family. I run back toward the door, but the doctor immediately slams it, locked, in my face.
For several minutes I hyperventilate in front of the magazine shelf, watching the other patients with horror.
A few of them are sitting at the table, dressed in hospital gowns, eating the remains of their breakfast, which appeared to be most unappetizing.
"May we please have some juice?" asks the patient standing next to me, a short middle-aged human woman with glasses, holding a milk carton. She takes a small sip out of the milk carton and takes a few small, jittery steps in a circle.
"May we please have some juice?"
And so she does, over and over again, unable to stop or say anything else or respond to her environment. What a frightful condition. I duck my head into my shell, as though afraid that her condition is catching.
The nurses walk in and out, rudely ignoring the patients' questions, wanting to spend as little time in this Narrenturm as possible. We are, after all, mentally ill lunatics; what we think does not matter.
"May we please have some juice?"
"No, we are all out of juice," said the nurse who pushed past that patient on her way back out of the ER, too ignorant to know that this patient is not really asking for juice but rather exhibiting the same sort of catatonic behavior that Iggy was when he had been constantly asking if he could please have a sip.
Or rather, the same catatonic behavior Iggy had been putting on...
I observe her for a while, and after some interaction with other nurses her spiel changes to "May we please have some juice or milk."
I get bored and my thoughts turn to panic. All of this happening, being here of all places when I should be at my alma mater going down in history as the youngest ever to win that prize... it is all just too much. I just want to scream and bang my head into a wall.
"I WANT OUT OF HERE!" I roar. "I AM A GENIUS AND I DO NOT DESERVE TO BE LOCKED UP AND TREATED LIKE A COMMON LUNATIC! I AM PRETTY SURE THAT THIS IS A VIOLATION OF MY RIGHTS! I HAVE A FRANKENSTEIN PRIZE TO WIN AND I AM GOING OUT OF MY MIND HERE AND THIS IS A MOST UNSUITABLE WAY TO TREAT THE MENTALLY ILL! I CANNOT STAND TO EVEN WASTE ONE HOUR HERE LET ALONE THE FULL 72! AND THAT VERDAMMT PILL IS NOT WORKING, IF ANYTHING IT'S MAKING ME FEEL WORSE!"
Indeed, I am feeling worse. Moodwise, I feel more enraged than I normally would. But my body is becoming slow and uncoordinated, as though my bones suddenly became heavy . I feel somewhat dizzy, as I had after Fawful had terrorized me with the swirls.
And then, somehow, it all clicks inside my semi-zombified mind. FAWFUL must be behind this!
Yes, this must have been the sick bean's plan all along, to terrify me out of my wits so I would do something to wind up HERE. But doing so is only serving to stall, not to throw me out of the competition, as he is undoubtedly planning to do. I can only wonder what step two to his twisted scheme is...
I ask the nurses walking in and out until one of them agrees to show me to my assigned bedroom. It is a barren room, similar to my room at Happy Homes but smaller, with two beds, one of them with my roommate passed out on it.
The sheets are coarse, probably woven from starched cotton rather than the fine linen I am used to. The pillowcase conceals a plastic-wrapped package, horrifyingly similar to the pillow I rested my head upon at Happy homes. The yarn afghan that serves as my only comforter is hardly sufficient for providing suitable warmth for a good night's - or day's as this case may be - sleep.
It is not hard falling asleep under the effects of the Zyco - the Zyprex - whatever that medication is called. My last thoughts are on how I must make sure not to sleep for too long lest they determine me to be morbidly depressed and in need of a longer period of "treatment", and, as I slip into the first stage of sleep, how Fawful alone cannot be responsible for this.
Why, only Iggy knows what the swirls do to me...
Oh and E. Gadd too...
Yeah, they all have it in for me, Fawful and Iggy and Gadd... well not Lavender; she is as much of a do-gooder as her cousin Princess Daisy, not to mention obsessively infatuated with me.
Yeeeaaahhh...
I wake up a... actually, I do not know how long I have been asleep. I see that my roommate is still asleep. I step outside of the bedroom and see that the sky is still lit outside, though exactly how bright cannot be determined, for the walls are high and the sun is overcast by stratus clouds of white. So a few hours at least, given how unusually clear for alpine weather it had been this morning.
I still wonder what time it is. The designers of this place obviously did not feel that the mentally ill had any need to know what time it is, and thus neglected to add any sort of clock. And of course anybody who was wearing a watch would have had it confiscated.
"May we please have some juice and milk."
"May we please have some juice and milk."
The catatonic woman is still at it. Her behavior is sort of... hypnotizing. I ask:
"What time is it?"
"What time is it?"
"What time is it?"
I should perhaps stop. It is probably not wise to interfere with this woman's behavior in her state.
"What time is it?"
"May we please have some juice and milk."
"What time is it?"
"May we please have some juice and milk."
"What time is it?"
"May we please have some juice and milk."
"What time is it?"
"What time is it."
I stop. Her echolalic babbling has changed to mimic mine.
The door opens, and the psychiatrist I recognize from this morning enters. I stare up into the glare on his lenses, as if they were time pieces, and I once again ask,
"What time is it?"
The echolalia woman turns around, her lenses equally shiny. She too asks,
"What time is it."
We both look at the psychiatrist and ask,
"What time is it?"
The psychiatrist ought to know what time it is...
His glasses seem to be getting shinier. Or maybe it's just getting darker, while the glare on them remains just as bright?
And so the doctor opens his mough to say:
"What time is it."
"What time is it."
The crazy woman turns toward me. Together they both stare me down, saying rather than asking,
"What time is it."
I stare deep into their glasses, which are nearly opaque by now from the steadily intensifying glare. Damn it, I REALLY want to know what time it is!
"What time is it."
"What time is it."
The glare is not that bright, but everything else in the room seems to be getting darker.
No, not darker... blurrier...
No, not blurring... everything is stretching. Like all of the shapes in my visual field are being stretched into one long rope like taffy...
My visual field becomes narrower from side to side, but stretches out from top to bottom. Incredible. It's like the two people I am looking at are becoming taller and farther away...
The only things that stay the same are the glasses glares. They do not stretch or move or get farther away, they just stay where they are to start with.
And then the taffy rope widens and swells into a circle. Amazing. It looks almost normal again, except that everything is not where it's supposed to be...
Every thing is upside down... no, inverted... no duplicated and made skinnier? And turned on the side?
The glares from the glasses begin to get with the program. Aahh, now I see...
My visual field is now one big whirlpool. A swirl.
Ahaha, those damn sneaky swirls. It feels like my brain is turning somersaults in my cranium. That can't be good. Wouldn't it have to disconnect from the brain stem to do that?
Or maybe my eyes are spinning around. Hahaha, they are just going to twist and twist until the optic nerve snaps from the tension of being so twisted. Damn it I hope the swirl starts turning in the other direction...
Yeah I should be terrified, haha. But NOOOOPE!
Yeah and they call that an antipsychotic... what was that really, lysergic acid diethylamide?
My last shred of sense pulls through and causes me to purposely crash face-first into the floor, with the hope of passing out.