They tell me I should keep a journal. Something to record my time here I suppose. To be honest, I'm not very good at keeping track of time. Or myself.
Smith's Grove Sanitarium.
This place isn't a happy one. It's sterile. Plain. I hate the uniforms they make us wear. It matches how pristine the sanitarium is.
The nurses are nice enough though—towards me at least. I'm glad they let me put up my drawings onto the walls of my room that would've gone otherwise empty. I think it's because I'm one of the few of the Dangerous Patients they can hold a "proper" conversation with.
I'm cognizant they say. Aware. Which meant I should be stimulated as such.
Jennifer is my favorite. I don't know her last name. The staff says it's for protective purposes—doctor's only. She's a dirty blonde, five feet even, and very pretty. I asked her to cut my hair as short as the facility would allow one day, and she happily obliged. I love Jennifer.
*
My first year here was a slog. I would receive uneasy looks from the staff—all of the patients deemed Dangerous did. I hated being lumped up with them.
One was a man who had gone "rabid," for lack of a better term. He chewed off the face of a bar patron. He only spoke in riddles if asked questions directly. Another had been holed up in the ceiling, and refused to be acknowledged by her parents. She killed them with piano wire around the throat. Her parents had given her lessons when they still pretended to love her. Poetic justice it seemed.
I myself don't remember what I did. The police said I murdered my mother, but I have a hard time believing them. I refused to see the body.
Then there was their most famous patient. Michael Myers.
He had already been here for nearly a decade when I initially caught a glimpse of him. I'm not sure I trust the staff to keep us all together and safe.
I've had nightmares of them killing me where I slept. Especially Michael.
The reports I read before my admittance were true. His eyes looked distant. It never seemed like he was truly there during our group therapy sessions. He had separate private sessions with Doctor Loomis; who had a reputation for being short with staff.
I noticed him a couple of times, and I think the good doctor knew I had been watching him in one of those few instances because he commented on my appearance.
"Oh. You've changed your hair," he had said.
I think he meant it to be a compliment.
I also noticed that Michael had a tendency to look something close to annoyed after his sessions with Doctor Loomis. Or maybe I'm just projecting. Again, I don't know. I've never talked to him to properly gauge a personality.
I'm no psychiatrist.
"He can talk," Jennifer told me one day. "The doctors said his vocal cords work fine. He just doesn't want to."
"I don't think I've ever seen him try to make friends," I murmured back.
"He doesn't seem the type to really need friends."
Now I won't sit here and delude myself into thinking "oh, what if I could be Michael's friend? He'd definitely talk to me!"
That's the kind of thinking that gets you fucking killed. I am of the camp that if you kill someone who's a family member—or like a family member to you—you'd most assuredly kill someone who's a virtual stranger to you.
I'm surprised they haven't taken away his metal cutlery privileges.
*
It's Tuesday. For the younger patients there are classes held. It's always one volunteer teacher. They even give us homework. Something to make it seem familiar. Almost normal.
Today it's Mr. Jones. He's teaching Oedipus. In my opinion, it seems a little morbid to have a lesson about a story that involves incest, eye gouging, and suicide with proven killers amongst the students. I wonder if they'll fire whoever signed off on it.
I sit in the front of the classroom. I have trouble hearing and reading the board from further away, so I prefer sitting as close as I can to the instructor. In school, I always hated sitting behind people who never failed to whisper in class.
Fortunately the class was small. They would break us by age groups. Unfortunately, this also meant I was grouped with Michael at least sixty percent of the time. The other forty percent was with Michael and the other Dangerous Patients.
Michael sat in the very back, as if to make himself invisible. Mr. Jones went on, my discomfort going unnoticed. I willed myself to not spare a glance at the vacant eyed young man. They tell me he's only two years my senior. Add that to the growing list of things I don't believe.
My psychiatrist, Doctor Taylor, says I'm not obsessed. He thinks my wariness is normal for someone who is pretty close to the famous killer, but he does tell me I should focus more on my own recovery.
"Do you talk to the orderlies who have to chain and unchain him?" I ask.
"On occasion," he admits cryptically. "We have a higher turnover rate because of it."
"Because of him," I nod. "Does he creep you out too?"
The session ends before he could reply.
I wouldn't have blamed him if he had said yes.
*
I draw Michael sometimes—when he isn't looking of course, but I think he knows somehow. I keep the drawings in my pillowcase. Jennifer makes sure the orderlies don't check my pillow when they make their weekly inspections. She doesn't want me to become a target, but deep down, I don't think Michael would care either way. Regardless, I still don't want him to know.
I'm scared, but I still draw him.
I feel so exposed every time I'm near him. Do others feel like this? Like we're nothing around him? It doesn't feel like he's narcissistic either. Nothing like him feeling a sense of superiority over us.
I've felt that before with my mother. Everything had to be about her, and like all narcissists, she refused treatment.
Michael is something wholly different.
*
After my first year they let me have razors.
"For good behavior," they said.
I wonder briefly if Michael gets the same treatment. He still has to be escorted with handcuffs. I only had to deal with that my first six months, and he's already been here for more than a decade now.
Doctor Taylor says it's "at the behest of Doctor Loomis." He probably knows better than us.
"Pure evil" is what the articles about Michael described him as.
Sometimes I think it's overkill, but other times I'm comforted by it. Especially now when my nightmares as of late have become horrifyingly vivid. It's been the same dream for the last two weeks.
I am running in the middle of a street light lit road. It's dark. No one is around for miles. I'm screaming. Michael is chasing me while wearing some sort of mask. He has a knife like the one he used to kill his sister, Judith. He catches me—he always does. Finally, I wake up to the plunging of the knife into my chest.
I always wake up in a cold sweat. Doctor Taylor shows worry for me when I tell him it's the second week. He tries to convince the board of specialists to have me relocated from the sanitarium.
They decline.
"I'll keep trying," he says gently. "You're receptive to our treatments, the classes, everything. I'll get you out."
I nod at him, but I'm still afraid. Do I deserve to leave?
