Chapter 7

Jackson

Jackson State Hospital probably wasn't at all how you would picture a lunatic asylum.

I was fortunate I suppose, (if you stretched the meaning of the word) to have been born during a period of reform, a time when Dorothea Dix campaigned for a kinder way to treat the mad. A system called 'moral treatment' had swept aside the majority of the victorian cruelties, and so, the asylum where I found myself was fashioned in the Kirkbride style, with five buildings stepped in a manner to allow as much air and light in as possible. Had you looked down upon it, ironically, I suppose, it would look like the wing of a bat.

But for all the dreams of air and light, by the time my father institutionalized me, the greed had set into the system like rot. Politicians had pinched pennies and shuffled rules, so that geriatrics where classed as insane. Thus the state saved money, but the 'kind' moral treatment system bore the influx of patients. So, the staff were inexperienced, underpaid, grim faced and frustrated. The facilities stripped back and crumbling, the comfy lounges threadbare and vomit stained.

Of course, none of this really mattered to me, my mind was so broken, my nightmares so terrible, I guess you could say that I barely spent much time there at all. I was "away with the fairies". Had you had asked me then, the name of the facility, or the year, or even the state, I wouldn't have been able to tell you.

It had only been the year prior, when Buffy, still a mortal, had told me of her vision of me in the asylum. It was the puzzle peice I needed to trace my beginnings. Thanks to Buffy, I had found my real name, my birth family and the place where I was condemned.

Buffy had then vanished from my life, taking with her all my hopes and visions for our future, so I guess I turned to my past for some comfort, some answers to fill the Buffy shaped hole in me.

So I kissed my family goodbye and made my way south.

Memories fade, but when you are as old as I, reality fades also. I found that the Kirkbride buildings had been torn down long ago, replaced with a new facility. Still, that too seemed as picked at mercilessly by greedy fingers as its predecessor, and though I left with copies of the files I needed to trace my origins, I left feeling just as empty and depressed.

They must have wondered what inspired the sizable anonymous donation they received the next week. I guess I had hoped to put to rest the ghost of Jackson State Hospital forever.

I should have known ghosts can't die.

…

Pain white, brain screaming white, like the start. Like the beginning. Venom coursing through, burning, annihilating. Electro shock white. Spiking high white. Clean slate. Clean page. Reboot. Tabula rasa white.

The sudden need to breathe seized me and my hot lips spluttered black saliva as I drew greedy breaths in, scorching hot. Can't move away, the heat burning me, all around me, rushing through my veins. I want to claw at my skin to vent it, to let the heat out, let the ice back in.

"Mary Alice, mercy me!" Nurse Cox seized my wrists, pulling my hands, with my bloody nails from my arms. "Look what you have gone done to yourself, silly poppet."

My body quivered and bucked, shivering naked in the steaming hot bathwater, and I wretched the foul black foam onto the filthy chequered floor.

"Blanche, would you look at this mess."

"Yes, Matron."

"Blanche, don't just stare, get a mop"

"Oh." The young nurse said, ginger curls and ruddy faced. She stared at me with wide eyes before catching herself. "Right away matron." she said, ducking away out of my sight.

Strong arms lifted me clear of the water, and placed me down on a rough towel surface. My skin felt thin like tissue, my muscles no stronger than fern leaves.

"Fine time to have a turn little Mary Alice."

"Not... real." I managed.

"No, no, quite right." Nurse Cox said her southern accent mellow and thick with motherly kindness. She daubed at my face. "Good girl."

"Not again. Please. Not again."

And for only the second time in my memory, my eyes wept tears.

…

I was walking through a memory, a fabrication. I knew this. But it was real. Real as fingertips tracing cross the winter frosted bark on a Forks cedar. Real as my fangs sinking into flesh. Real as blood exploding across my tongue, salt sweet, thick and singing with life.

Real as the violence of Buffy's kisses as she came for me.

I could hear the buzz of fans chopping at the still, warm air. Lies. Feel the sweat beading on my fragile, mortal skin. Lies and more lies.

But are they lies? Because the lead paint on the window frame flakes under my scarred fingers, lodges under my bitten nails. Winter-Tree-Bark real.

Ironic I went back here for answers when I lost Buffy the first time. I lost her again and now I am trapped here.

I am walking, in this memory/reality, walking with slippered feet through the honey colored light and airy halls of Jackson State Hospital in 1920.

My cot was in room for two, long and wide with an arched window at one side that overlooked a lawn with a pink crape myrtle tree. The woodland beyond was strangely dark, and as I gazed at it, the shifting shadows made my mind itch and twist; I had to look away.

The plaster walls, painted thickly with canary yellow paint. The floors were cream linoleum, streaked grey from mop water.

I sat down and the bed felt familiar. The other bed was empty, but I knew this dream. For my torture, it would not be empty for long. She would be admitted soon.

After the hot bath where I first entered the matron had dressed me in a faded slip and dressing gown, shapeless and worn. It was now flecked with my own, human blood, as were the dressings on my arms where my nails had torn at my paper thin flesh. The blood should be singing to my senses, but it just smelled sharp and metallic when I lifted it to my nose. I knew licking at it would taste of ash. Everything here tasted of ash.

It was a dream, of course, the Irkalla poison flowing through me, building my own personal hell from my darkest days. I knew this. But the detail, oh the detail… and the sensation? Maddening real.

Buffy had fallen twice into this hell. Her own version of this, months in her mind. I had endured it but once.

But what option did I have? My only hope was someone out there would be able to find me.

Oh god, out there, she is burying me alive.