Awthorez Noetz: Lemme just go on head and post this up. It matters not how much I perfect it if I don't simply send it on to the presses. Had a few friends read/beta this, and they thought it was loony toonz af lol. Anyway, guys. Hope you enjoy!

Disclaimer: Don't come for me, queens. I don't own shxt 'cept the original characters.


Alicia awoke strapped to a bed, covered in a thick, gray vomit, and gripped with the desperate urge to pee. The only part of her body that she could freely move was her head, and she turned it frantically back and forth, looking around for any clue as to where she might be while she tried to wriggle out of her restraints. But no matter how hard she strained against the thick, leather restraints that held her pinned to the bed, they refused to yield to her struggling. The edges of the straps were tattered and frayed, and the harder she struggled, the deeper they bit into her wrists and ankles. Good torture points, the wrists and ankles.

What happened? Why was she here? She tried to remember, but her head felt foggy, and her body was tired and aced. Had she been in some kind of accident? A car crash? A fire? Perhaps she was severely burned. That might at least explain the restraints: they didn't want her picking at her skin. She closed her eyes and began to weep. What a horrible thing, she thought, to be burned at her age. She sobbed for a while, screaming at the top of her lungs for someone — anyone — to help her. But nobody came. Exhausted, she fell asleep and dreamt of lizard skin.


When she awoke next, who knows how many hours later (since the room had only one ceiling light and no windows), the need to empty her bladder was so bad that she felt sharp pains shooting through her lower region. She whipped her head back and forth again, but there was no one within her line of vision. All she noticed now was the strange look to the walls. They had a thick, tufted texture to them, almost as if they were…

"...Padded," Alicia finished her thought aloud.

Now, what kind of burn victim needed to be in a padded room? She contemplated for a while, and then it occurred to her. Why, one who is out of her mind, of course. Then it all came flooding back: that horrible phone call, just when she was getting ready to leave the house. As strange as it is, the phone rings all the same, be it wonderful news or the end of life as you know it. She heard the doctor's strangely high-pitch voice. "I'm sorry, Mrs. Ciriano. It appears that your daughter's condition has resulted in an infection that causes her to have renal failure. It is just a matter of time now. You have my deepest regrets."

Alicia had truly needed his deepest regrets. She needed everyone's deepest regrets. Because she would be the one who had to tell Derek. The doctor thought it was better that way. Better for him, undoubtedly. But first, Alicia had needed a Diazapam. Or two. Or three. That's what they were for, after all: for the times when you needed someone's deepest regrets.

She waited for the meds to kick in, but ten minutes later, her hands were shaking so badly that she couldn't pick up the hair brush. So, she tossed back a couple more. It will be a cold day in hell if she was going to tell her husband the news without her hair properly combed and her makeup immaculately applied. Derek liked immaculate grooming. He liked her as pretty as a peach.

She sat down on the bed and tried to practice the monologue, but the furthest she got was, "Babe, I'm so sorry, but" before she burst into tears.

Damn the Diazapam. It was not helping at all. Why was she relying on the weakest gun in her armory? She went to the medicine cabinet and gathered up several fistfulls of bottles and spread them out on the bed: Lorazepam, Chlordiazepoxide, Clonezepam, Alprazolam, and Trifluoperazine. Certainly, inside one or more of these bottles was the calm and bravery she needed to face the task.

By nature, Alicia is quite small-boned and petite, but you wouldn't know it from her astonishing tolerance to medications. She can take enough to knock a Clydesdale off his feet, and the most she'd do is yawn drowsily and ask when the next dose is due. She didn't see any real cause for concern when she took a pill from each bottle and downed them all at once. Twenty minutes later, she still felt nothing, but she couldn't manage for the love of God or money to get her eyeliner on right. It kept wandering off of her eyeline onto her muzzle. She scrubbed vehemently at the errant, black marks, but that only managed to smear them onto her tear-dampened face.

Swollen mouth, glazed eyes, smears streaked on her face: this was certainly not the look she was going for. She looked like a muddled mime, and Derek hated mimes. Alicia started to get nervous. What if she never managed to be pretty again? She'd heard anecdotes of people suddenly aging overnight from shock. Perhaps it is also possible to suddenly turn ugly?

Eyeing the bottles spread out on the bed, she figured that, surely, another dose or two wouldn't hurt. Just to take the edge off of the panic. Just to focus her swirling thoughts. As soon as she felt collected, she would wait for Derek to get home to tell him the news. But not until then. And certainly not now. She owed him more than collected: she owed him tranquil.

In search of tranquility, she swallowed the next ten pills with a big glass of cranberry juice cocktail, figuring that she needed something in her stomach to help them dissolve. When was the last time she'd eaten? This morning? The day before? Two days ago? Who cares? Food was just another item that used to matter before. Food, sex, books, movies, video games — all of those reliable pleasures of life, before the Sickle Cell Anemia diagnosis, seemed absurd trifles now. Hearing Taissa hush after the pain medication was administered: now, THAT was joy. A ninety-eight point six temperature reading: that was pure ecstacy.

Alicia knew that a prolonged lack of appetite was a telltale indicator of impending mania, but that was certainly not her case. Her current mood on a scale of one to ten was a negative-twelve. But who wouldn't be depressed in her situation? Sure, she was secretly suicidal. She longed for death, daydreamed about it, it was all she thought about in her idle time. But she had no intent to act upon her suicidal urges — not yet, not while her family needed her alive and sane. They needed her. She loves them. That's all that mattered.

So, when she tossed back the next fistful of pills, there was nothing suicidal about that gesture; she had simply forgotten that she'd taken the previous dose. She had also started to feel the twinges of tranquility — a warmth in her toes, a pleasant humming in her ears — and she just wanted to quicken the process.

But when she went to put the cranberry juice away, the ceiling and the floor began to tilt at an oblique angle. The next thing she knew, she was flat on ceramic tile. The cold, smooth floor felt good against her flushed cheeks. It dawned on her, as she lay there, that she was happy, happier than she'd been in a long time. She remembered that she was supposed to be doing something, there was something important she was supposed to remember. But not for the life of her could she recall. All that mattered was the here and now: the cool caress of the tile, the soothing song of the refrigerator. She was about to drift off to sleep when her cell phone rang, jolting her awake.

The phone didn't ring too often anymore, unless it was news from the doctors. As Taissa got sicker and Alicia became more depressed, she'd pulled away from the life she'd known. Her friends meant well, but their expressions of sympathy only made her feel more alone. They were never quite the right words, and they were never anywhere near enough. In truth, the battle lines had been drawn: it was she and her family against the world. There was no room for anyone else.

The goddamn phone kept ringing, and she tried to get up, but the bones in her legs had turned into mush and wouldn't support her weight. So, she crawled on her hands and knees across the kitchen floor to the opposite end of the kitchen island. She noticed that when she reached up for her phone, her hand was shaking violently.

"Hello?" she mumbled. She couldn't quite make out the words, but she recognized the voice. It was her best friend, Amber, making one of her ubiquitous cross-town welfare calls. Ever since Taissa went into the hospital several months ago, Amber had taken to calling Alicia at odd hours just to make sure she was alive and able to pick up the phone. It was sweet, and Alicia really appreciated the gesture, but she didn't really feel like talking at that moment. She felt like crawling back in front of the refrigerator and listening to it sing its sweet hymn. She explained that to Amber as best and clearly as she could, but Amber told her that it came out sounding like one long slodden slur of vowels without a single consonant.

Amber asked, "Alicia… Have you taken your medicine?"

For some odd reason, Alicia found that question to be so hilarious, that she burst out laughing and couldn't stop. She laughed so hard that she drew tears. When she raised her hand to wipe her face, messing up her makeup all over her face. She suddenly remembered the times that were not so funny and began to cry instead. "NO!" Alicia shouted. "I can't remember, AND YOU CAN'T MAKE ME REMEMBER!" Then, she chucked the phone into the greatroom, as hard as she could, where she heard something expensive shatter. That too struck her as funny for some reason, and she was once again laughing until she sobbed, careful not to touch the tears this time.

Apparently, that was how the paramedics were called. All Alicia could remember after that was taking another handful of pills, a double dose that time, because she was finally starting to feel the effects, and the effects felt pretty damn good. Then she crawled back to the refrigerator, hugged the ceramic tile, and knew nothing more until she woke up, staring with misapprehension at padded walls with the desperate urge to pee.


A door, which had been hidden beneath the padding suddenly opened, and an entourage of blue-scrubbed people walked in, snapping her out of her past and into the present. Alicia guessed about twelve people in one glance, nine men and three women. Some of the younger blue scrubs held back a bit, so Alicia assumed that they were residents or students. A middle-aged gentleman, a big, burly, grey-grizzled Ursid man, stepped up to her bed with a file and pen and began snapping questions at her. Did she know her name? Did she know where she was? Did she know who was the General of the Cornerian Army? At that point, Alicia stopped him and apologetically explained that she really needed to empty her bladder. She would gladly give him all of the information he wanted, including the names of the four-star generals of each military division that she could recall, if he would simply let her go to the bathroom.

He chewed on his pen, lightly, as he studied her file on his clipboard. "...Hmm, no. We can't undo your restraints just yet," he said. "We have you listed as actively suicidal."

Alicia laughed humorlessly. "You think I was trying to kill myself? Believe you me, if I was trying to commit suicide, I'd take a lot more than just a few handfuls of pills. I'd take whole bottles, dozens of them, and I'd wash them down with bottles and bottles of vodka. I have nowhere near the sufficient amount of pills stockpiled yet. And I still haven't figured out the perfect way to slash my wrists, and I haven't found the right kind of plastic bag to tie over my head…"

Her voice trailed off, as she noticed several of the younger blue scrubs typing vehemently on their little data tablets. The rest were just staring at her, mouths agape with fascination, as if Alicia sprouted a second head. She suddenly realized that she was making a losing argument. Certainly, her words had not the desired effect on ol' Dr. Greybear. He simply turned to the rest of the entourage to issue his dissertation: "Take note of the attempt to persuade by way of hyperbole," he said. "This is a characteristic of grandiose thinking that can be expected of acute mania."

Alicia wasn't manic — she was depressed right now and the mania hadn't swung in yet — but what difference did it make? "Doctor," Alicia said, "I am perfectly willing to be manic, hypomanic, dysthymic, cyclothymic, or whatever, so long as it serves to get these restraints off. Because, please, sir: I have to pee."

"Are you willing to admit that you were attempting to commit suicide?"

Alicia's eye twitched, her hands curling into fists. A loaded question. She took a deep breath and released a slow exhale. "I'm sorry, no," she said. "That is simply not the case. I will admit to making a poor judgment call, but I was not trying to end my life. Please understand: it is a point of honor with me right now. I can't kill myself. My family needs me. You see, my daughter, she's—"

"...Then I have no other option than to enact a fourteen-day hold," he said. "You'll have to stay here on the locked ward for now. Perhaps in a couple of days, you can be transferred to the inpatient unit if your condition improves. We will have to wait and see." He dashed off a few notes on the clipboard and handed it to the young woman standing next to him. "Make sure she gets the haloperidol injection immediately," he said. "And the chlorpromazine PRN." He turned around and walked out of the door, with the blue scrubs shuffling behind him.

Alicia stared at the spot where the door had once been, which was now a seamless expanse of quilted beige. She then heard it: a minacious cacophony of click-click-clicks, the unequivocal chorus of lock and key. Intuitively, she started thrashing from side to side. She wriggled, she squirmed, she tried to wrench herself free, but to no avail. The air was growing increasingly thin, and she could not catch sufficient breath. Alicia was on the verge of a full-scale panic attack. Ironically, her bursting bladder came to her rescue. She couldn't think about anything else, other than running streams, gushing fountains, and mighty, thunderous waterfalls.

Just give up and go, her body demanded. But one tiny sliver of her dignity protested. There was more in peril than just wetting the bed. The greatest challenge of being mentally ill is always, despite the enormous oppositions stacked against you, to maintain a sense of pride. But her body didn't care, it just wanted to pee. She tried shouting as loudly as she could, a range of interjections from "Nurse!" to "Orderly!" to plain old "Help!", but no one came.

She leaned back onto her pillow and sighed. "It's just your body," Alicia gently whispered to herself. "They haven't touched your mind, they don't possess your spirit. You will just be a little bit wet. That's all."

Taking a deep breath, she let her muscles go. The urine erupted in rhythmic pulses, strong contractions that eventually eased into a steady stream, then to a seemingly endless trickle, before it finally slowed and stopped all together. Alicia looked down, amazed that her body could hold that much liquid. She was soaked everywhere between her hips and her thighs. And the sheet was not just wet, it was drenched. Once released of the burden, Alicia's body felt like it was floating. Her mind hovered somewhere up near the ceiling, strangely detached from the sopping-wet spectacle below that was strapped beneath the sheet. Alicia fell asleep to the tune of urine tinkling from the bed to the floor.


Alicia later awoke to a light blaring starlight into her eyes. "Wake up!" yelled a voice from behind the bright beam. "Now look at what you did. Was that nice?" A murky silhouette of a heavy-set woman came into Alicia's view, gesturing with a pen light to the dripping sheet.

"Not nice. But it was necessary," Alicia said. "I tried to—"

"Tried to! Tried to!" the woman mocked in a high, snappy voice. "That's what they all say. I suppose we will just have to try harder next time, won't we?" she said as she whipped the sheet off the bed in one swift motion. The tail end of the sheet slapped Alicia in the face, and she caught herself before she cried out. Not now, not with her.

Alicia rearranged her features to be as cogent as possible. She looked at the woman from head to toe, contemplating whether she should read this bitch into oblivion, to explain in excruciatingly explicit detail about how her oily Suid features, replete with a bad case of cystic acne, reminded Alicia of ground meat. Or how her sloppy-bodied figure looked like a smoked sausage as it squeezed into her 4X-sized scrubs. But instead, she smoothed her voice. It was Alicia who was the one strapped to a bed in a puddle of her own urine. "I apologize for causing you so much trouble. But do you have any idea when they will be releasing me from these restraints?"

"That's not my job, I'm just supposed to administer the meds," she said, then added with a look somewhere between disdain and disgust, "...and clean up the mess."

The next thing Alicia knew, she'd been jabbed with a needle in her shoulder. "Wait!" she yelled, as a warm woozy sensation began to flood through her body. "There's been a mistake. I never meant to ki—" But before she could finish the syllable, she had drifted off into a heavy sleep that felt remarkably like drowning.

When Alicia next awoke, it was to Dr. Greybear poking her shoulder with his pen. She looked around him: yes, the blue scrubs were also assembled with him. "So, are you now going to admit that you were trying to kill yourself?" he asked her.

She looked down and saw that while the sheet had been changed, she was still lying upon the same urine-drenched mattress. That decided her.

"Okay, Doc. Fine. I was trying to kill myself. Now can I get out of these binds and take a shower?"

Alicia could have sworn that a smile fleeted across his face. Pulling a set of keys out of his pocket, Dr. Greybear matched the ones to her restraints. She'd never heard a sound more glorious and melodic than the sound of the succeeding clicks that announced her release. Alicia clapped her hands together in sheer delight, then wriggled her legs in the air. To hell with dignity: she was free! A couple of the blue scrubs giggled and Dr. Greybear silenced them with a single frown.

"Now, young lady, now that you've cooperated, your treatment can finally start," he said. "We will transfer you to the inpatient unit where you can meet the other patients who have issues just like yours. I am sure that you will enjoy that."

Trying hard not to let her eyes betray her, Alicia asked: "So, you think that we can negotiate that fourteen day hold?"

He did not smile or frown, simply said, "We will have to see." The hell did that mean? With her mother, it meant no. With her dad, it meant yes. She couldn't decide which parental figure Dr. Greybear resembled at the moment, nor did it matter. The point was he was the adult, and she was the child. Alicia curled into a ball and sucked gingerly on the sore, inflamed skin on her inner wrist.


The inpatient unit felt just like kindergarten, with plenty of rules and regularly timetabled activities. There were plenty of Franka Elise coloring books to color, finger painting supplies to finger paint, and the coup de gras: jigsaw puzzles. Shoehorned between all the fun and games was "group." That's what they called it, "group." Alicia wouldn't call it therapy because nothing really of therapeutic nature took place in those cramped, stuffy rooms. No one talked about the here-and-now, the insufferable truth of where they were and what they thought of each other. Someone sobbed. Another talked about his mother. Most often, they fought against the stupor, stifling over-medicated yawns, twitching and squirming in their seats like restless preschoolers.

But of all the rules they handed her when she checked in, no one told Alicia the most important one. On her very first day on the unit, when she made the mistake of staring at Carlo. While most Venomian Chamaeleonids were often long and gangly, Carlo was big and burly, and his scales were white, like carnation-tinted alabaster. She'd always found Reptilian races interesting, but to boot, Carlo was a special rarity, being albino.

They were sitting in the cafeteria on opposite sides of a long dining table when Carlo's gargantuan arm suddenly reached across and grabbed Alicia's polystyrene cup of iced tea and crushed it in deliberate slowness in his fist. Brown liquid gushed everywhere, landing not only on Alicia, but others dining at the table. No one said a word but Carlo. He stared at Alicia with his pink, almost red eyes. Expressive like an anime character, which would have been beautiful if not for the virulence in his gaze.

"What do you think you're looking at?" he growled.

Ice blue eyes wide and wild like a spooked animal, Alicia shook her head. "Nothing!"

"If I ever catch you looking at me again…" He let his fingers finish his sentence for him by dropping the mangled remains of her tea.

That's when she learned: never stare a paranoid schizophrenic in the eye.

Immediately, she averted her eyes, but it was hard to know where to look, since four of the other seven patients were also schizophrenic. Luckily, there were a couple of obsessive-compulsives who didn't mind a cursory glance from Alicia. But the truth was that she didn't much like looking at them. One was a cutter — or rather an eraser — who'd rubbed the fur of almost every inch of his exposed skin and was now gnawing at the sores. The other one was a young lady who might have been pretty if it were not for the bald spots dotting her scalp and the utter lack of eyelashes. That didn't keep her from plucking, however. Pluck, pluck, pluck, all of the day long, with an almost orgasmic moan of satisfaction each time she managed to pull out a hair.

Alicia knew the clinical term for this: trichotillomania. But a fat lot of good her fancy education was doing now: there was no one to impress. She was as alone here as she was in the outside world. She didn't dare say much to the techs and clinicians for fear that she'd never see the light of day ever again. And she didn't dare talk to the other patients either, because they didn't feel like actual people to her. They seemed more like walking diagnoses, and quite frankly, they scared the shit out of her. She didn't belong here — not yet anyway. And she wanted to keep it that way.


The inpatient unit felt just like kindergarten, with plenty of rules and regularly timetabled activities. There were plenty of Franka Elise coloring books to color, finger painting supplies to finger paint, and the coup de gras, jigsaw puzzles. Shoehorned between all the fun and games was "group." That's what they called it, "group." Alicia wouldn't call it therapy because nothing really of therapeutic nature took place in those cramped, stuffy rooms. No one talked about the here-and-now, the insufferable truth of where they were and what they thought of each other. Someone sobbed. Another talked about his mother. Most often, they fought against the stupor, stifling over-medicated yawns, twitching and squirming in their seats like restless pre-schoolers.

Of all the rules they handed her when she checked in, no one told Alicia the most important one: never stare a paranoid schizophrenic in the eye. She learned this on her very first day on the unit, when she made the mistake of staring at Carlo. While most Venomian Chamaeleonid were often long and gangly, Carlo was big and burly, and his scales were white, like carnation-tinted alabaster. She'd always found reptilian races interesting, but to boot, Carlo was a special rarity, being albino.

They were sitting in the cafeteria on opposite sides of a long dining table when Carlo's gargantuan arm suddenly reached across and grabbed Alicia's polystyrene cup of iced tea and crushed it in deliberate slowness in his fist. Brown liquid gushed everywhere, landing not only on Alicia, but others dining at the table. No one said a word but Carlo. He stared at Alicia with his pink, almost red eyes. Expressive like an anime character, which would have been beautiful if not for the virulence in his gaze.

"What do you think you're looking at?" he growled.

Ice blue eyes wide and wild like a spooked animal, Alicia shook her head. "Nothing!" she quickly replied.

"If I ever catch you looking at me again…" he let his fingers finish his sentence for him by dropping the mangled remains of her tea.

Immediately, she averted her eyes, but it was hard to know where to look, since four of the other seven patients were also schizophrenic. Luckily, there were a couple of obsessive-compulsives who didn't mind a cursory glance from Alicia. But the truth was that she didn't too much of like looking at them. One was a cutter-or rather an eraser-who'd rubbed the fur of almost every inch of his exposed skin and was now gnawing at the sores. The other one was a young lady who might have been pretty if it were not for the bald spots dotting her scalp and the utter lack of eyelashes. That didn't keep her from plucking, however. Pluck, pluck, pluck, all of the day long, with an almost orgasmic moan of satisfaction each time she managed to pull out a hair.

Alicia knew the clinical term for this: trichotillomania. But a fat lot of good her fancy education was doing now: there was no one to impress. She was as alone here as she was in the outside world. She didn't dare say much to the techs and clinicians for fear that she'd never see the light of day ever again. And she didn't dare talk to the other patients either, because they didn't feel like actual people to her. They seemed more like walking diagnoses, and quite frankly, they scared the shit out of her. She didn't belong here-not yet anyway. And she wanted to keep it that way.

Alicia elected not to have any visitors. When she was finally allowed to access a phone, she only called Derek and her kids.

She deliberated calling a few other people, but to be honest, Alicia was too shamed for the Devil to let anyone see her like this, doing the Thorazine shuffle in frowsy hospital socks. Better to wait till she gets home where she can turn it into a funny story.

Certainly, there was no lack of material. The latest arrival to the unit was a young bicolor Felid gentleman in his late thirties, with piercing green eyes. Alicia was hoping for another manic-depressive, but as soon as he opened his mouth, she knew she was in for another diagnosis entirely.

"Why hello," he said. "I am the incarnation of the God of Krazoa. You may simply refer to me as Krazoa."

Alicia stared at him for a moment, her face slowly cracking into a smile, before she burst into a fit of riotous laughter. Is this dude for real? This has to be a joke, right? A deity-reincarnate in a mental hospital. How original.

"May I ask what humors you so?" he asked with a puzzled frown. "I take it you are secular?"

Alicia, trying to catch her breath, "Oh-oh, I'm… No, I'm a follower. Definitely," she said, humoring him. Sick or not, she couldn't take him seriously.

"Then you should have genuflected when I entered," he admonished her. "I will forgive you this time, but let it not happen again." He looked at her with his piercing, laser beam gaze, and a chill swept over her skin. He then placed the bulbs of his middle and index finger on her forehead, closed his eyes, and prayed. What if a deity was indeed reincarnated as a regular person? Would this be where they'd end up? There is a fine line, indiscernible at times, between charisma and insanity.

But this Krazoa God was harmless enough, until you forgot to genuflect when you approached him, in which case he would erupt into screaming, eerie high-pitched shrills, until the offending party knelt, or a nurse administered a sedative — whichever came first. But once pacified, his eyes returned to the amicable green and his face relaxed into that beatific smile, and he proceeded to bestow blessings upon everything in his path: the other patients, the armchairs, the snack fridge, the jigsaw puzzles.

A word about the puzzles: There were at least a dozen of them stacked on tables, waiting to be assembled, and more on the floor in varying stages of completion. They were strongly encouraged, even urged, to work on them. Alicia later learned that they were not really puzzles at all, but "occupational therapy", and she was being billed three thousand credits a day for the privilege of working on them.

Truthfully, Alicia was bored sick and was grateful for anything that kept her even minimally preoccupied. So she took to them with a vengeance. She didn't care what the final product was: Rural Farmhouse, Sector Z in the Night Sky, Vinicius Reinaldi's Sunny Day, sunrise over Corneria City, sunset over Aquas. It mattered not, she worked on them all. If you weren't crazy when you started, you were by the time you finished — or rather, failed to finish. For an ardent perfectionist like Alicia, it was absolute torture. For those obsessive-compulsives who couldn't stop trying to make the wrong piece fit over and over and over again, it was borderline cruelty.

Little things like missing puzzle pieces matter when you are no longer in control of your surroundings, when every decision is made for you, from what you eat to what you wear to when you sleep, to who you associate with. Alicia found herself viciously guarding her progress. It was her own little space of autonomy, however imperfect and incomplete. In fact, despite all her efforts to be the perfect patient, she nearly lost her mind one day when she walked into the puzzle room to witness one of the schizophrenics eating the sun from her Sunny Day. "What in the hell do you think you're doing?" she demanded, forgetting that you should never confront a schizophrenic head-on. It activates all his well-oiled alarms.

"I was hungry," he said. Alicia was so charmed by the fairytale logic that she smiled and broke him off another piece.

Smiles were hard to come by on the unit. She'd been there seven days already and could count the smiles on two fingers. Genuine smiles. It was nothing but smiles when she saw the doctors. She figured that it was the only way to escape the fourteen-day hold, so she claimed to have a sudden epiphany and was glowing with her newly discovered appreciation for life. She rarely saw the same doctor twice in a row, so it was hard to tell what the overall impression was that she was making. However, she did overhear them talking in the hall once. "Excellent insight," one of them crowed. "Strong motivation," and "Self-imposed integration," she also heard.

Alicia wasn't too sure what the last one meant, but figured that any form of integration might have been good. So why in the name of Peter and all of his saints was she still on this fourteen-day hold? It was impossible to imagine another week of itchy traction hospital socks; of menacing albinos; of fleshly incarnates of screaming gods; of legions of empty daylight hours and drugged-into-oblivion nights. She should be with her family right now, she thought, and a longing pang shot through her. Seven more days, and her sanity would explode all over the walls, mingling nicely with the bilious green wallpaper.

For the first time since entering the hospital, Alicia craved the suffocating, black nothingness that followed her nightly Diazapam injection. She couldn't bear the pretense anymore of planning, finessing, manipulating, scheming to get free, when the truth was that she was trapped in a psych ward and there wasn't a goddamn thing she could do about it. It didn't matter that she'd successfully championed for the equality of women and disenfranchised persons in both the real word and the virtual, to the point where she was voted #67 out of Corneria's 100 Most Influential People in The Chronicle Magazine. This wasn't even real life. This was Kafka-land, and all of the puzzles have missing pieces.


Alicia woke up the next morning, and she was decidedly depressed. She hoped that she didn't have any interviews with the shrinks that day; it was going to be hard enough to maintain civility with the rest of the patients, let alone try to glitter with newfound drive and resolution while a thick-witted blue scrub took notes.

She glanced in the mirror, stuck out her tongue at her reflection, half-assed dragged a comb through her hair, and then shuffled down the hall to breakfast.

There were only two other patients in the dining room: Carlo and the Krazoa God. Alicia studiously averted her eyes from Carlo while offering a half-curtsy to Krazoa, which she hoped would suffice as a genuflection at effing balls-thirty a.m. in the morning. It apparently worked because Karazoa offered her a seat at their table.

After getting her tray consisting of a hot bowl of steeped oats and a carton of orange juice, Krazoa scooted down to make space for her to join them. She would have preferred to eat alone, but she didn't want to be rude — or more important, perceived as rude, especially by Carlo.

Krazoa and Carlo were having quite the animated discussion about the color of The Virgin Queen Muhao's eyes of all things. Carlo swore that her eyes were brown while Krazoa insisted that they were green. Alicia decided to add her two cents: "Well, I know for a fact that Queen Muwtu Muhao's eyes were blue," she said as she sprinkled a packet of brown sugar into her oatmeal.

"You shouldn't have said that," Carlo immediately admonished her. "Now we're in for it."

"Whaddaya mean?" Alicia asked, but it was all too apparent what he meant. Krazoa had reached into his pajama bottoms and began fondling himself in front of the world to see.

"He does this every time you mention her."

"Who?" Alicia asked. "The Krazoa Queen Muhao?"

Krazoa groaned and redoubled his efforts.

She was embarrassed, amused, and frightened all at the same time. She sought support from the only other person at the table, her eyes pleading with Carlo's for some protection. After all, he was a foot taller and a hundred pounds heavier than Krazoa; a big guy with an even bigger disease.

No sooner did their eyes lock, did Carlo swing his humongous hand up, gripping Alicia by her frail neck nearly all the way 'round. The force caused both of them to topple backwards in their chairs, and Alicia hit the floor having the wind knocked out of her with all of Carlo's two-hundred-and-fifty pounds on her windpipe.

"The fuck are you looking at?!" he snarled through gritted teeth as Alicia ineffectually tried to pry his meaty fingers off of her neck. Stars danced before her eyes, obscuring the demon-from-hell look in Carlo's; she immediately closed hers and laid stock-still, succumbing to the fear violently trembling through her limbs. In all the time it took for that to happen, the technicians and nurses sprinted across the cafeteria to aid, trying to pry the behemoth off of her and calm him down. While Carlo shouted and pushed the workers off of him, Alicia felt a scream tickle the back of her throat. Was this how she would die?

Krazoa had finished his self-ministrations by then, and his eyes had returned to their emerald green serenity. He smiled lightly at Carlo and stroked him on the forearm.

Alicia could feel Carlo's grip around her windpipe loosen, imperceptibly at first, and then all at once he released her neck. He stood up, and the techs and nurses clamored around him.

Alicia coughed and gasped for breath, each inhale burning her sore windpipe, but each resulting cough only hurt her throat more. Rubbing her aching neck, tears gave way and she lay there staring at the ceiling; and then, she knew not how many minutes later, she was staring into the green eyes of Krazoa.

"What is your real name?" Alicia asked, "I mean, the one your parents gave you?"

"Christopher," he said.

"Chris, I—"

"No, Christopher," he corrected.

"Christopher, I want you to know: you just saved my life. How can I ever repay you?" He helped her to her feet by this point, and they were the only patients in the cafeteria.

"I want you to forgive him."

"Dude, are you outta your mind?!" Alicia almost screamed, "This might be my ticket out of here!" Even when she was laying on the floor a minute ago, she was thinking how she could turn this to her advantage. It didn't matter that she was still trembling, or that a scream was still tickling her uvula. Her logician's brain is always on the go — evaluating, calculating, deliberating the odds and possible outcomes. The face of her first year torts professor inexplicably popped into her head, and above it, two words glared in bright neon: "foreseeable risk." She knew that the hospital had clear notice of Carlo's dangerous quirks, because the day he'd first confronted her in the cafeteria, she'd made a point of mentioning it to the head nurse. "Oh, he's like that with everyone," was her nonchalant reply. Now this filled Alicia with litigatory glee.

"Seriously, Chris, I'm—"

"Christopher."

"Sorry. Christpher, seriously, I'm out of here. They've got exposure, they'll have to let me go."

"If you do this, they will take him back to the locked ward, and they will never let him out."

A visceral memory came flooding back to her of that horrible room with padded walls and no windows. The narrow bed with the leather restraints. The tune of yellow tinkles. Empathy began to flood Alicia's heart.

"He's just like you," Christopher said, "he's sick."

Just like her? Just like her?! He was nothing like Alicia. He lived at the beck and call of a monster inside him that made him do dangerous, terrible things, while Alicia... She thought long and hard and looked upon Carlo and the nurses and techs negotiating with the riled-up but steadily calming behemoth albino. Oh, hell. Who was she kidding? Alicia had a monster living inside of her too. Who the hell else told her to keep taking those pills to kill the noise in her head, when her family needed her alive and sane?

She then realized why she was avoiding the other patients. They were potential mirrors. What she feared was not the insanity of strangers, but the insanity of her own. She was terrified of catching a glimpse of herself in passing.

The techs and nurses had been progressively making Carlo calmer by the moment. The time was now or never.

"Hey, um…" Alicia approached the crowd surrounding the behemoth. "It was my fault! I was messing with him. It's all my fault."

One of the head technicians, who gently held Carlo by his arm, turned to Alicia and said, "What? You were provoking him?"

"Yes. I was. My bad."

"You shouldn't do that!" he reproached Alicia, "Carlo's very sick, you shouldn't play with him like that!"

"Well what do you want me to say? I'm fucked up too!" she retorted.

The tech's expression softened. "...You're a smart girl. You wanna meet me for drinks when you get out of here?" Alicia answered by scoffing and walking away. Who the hell hits on their psych ward patients? "What'd I say?" he asked Alicia's retreating form.

Taking her seat, she watched as Carlo was released by the crowd of workers after getting him calm. He came back to the table and took a seat, and Alicia dropped her gaze before their eyes met. "Carlo?"

"Yes?"

"Can you pass the sugar?

Christopher beamed at her, and to Alicia, it oddly felt good. She'd like to say that she and Carlo became fast friends. But unfortunately, he was carted off somewhere that very afternoon — word on the street was shock therapy. Christopher and Alicia became allies of sorts. He was good company, when his meds were working. They became mealtime buddies, along with several patients whose symptoms were somewhat less frightening than that of Carlo: Lizbeth, who was depressed to the point of near catatonia; Tom, a bipolar who couldn't stop talking, his every other word a profanity; and Elexis, who saw visions and didn't seem any more insane than the garden variety psychic on Lorenzo Beach. They shared the instant intimacy of the oppressed, finding endless topics of discussion in the apathy of nurses, the incompetence of the doctors, and the shocking injustices of the health care system. Mostly, however, they talked about what it was like to be emotionally ill — a topic they assiduously avoided in "group."

"You seem a lot better," Christopher pointed out, seeing Alicia spit up her tea from laughing so hard at one of Tom's riffs of profanity.

She almost didn't want to admit it, she'd become so safe and familiar with despair, but it was true. She felt better. And it showed, because that afternoon, just a few days shy of the fourteen-day hold, she was told she was being discharged.

It was weird saying goodbye to the other patients. She felt intensely guilty to leave them, as if she were the only one walking away whole from a plane crash. So, as to assuage her guilt, Alicia decided to stage a rebellion on her last night there. She knew it was probably too little too late, but it was a start at least.

She assembled the patients that she'd befriended and led them into the so-called occupational therapy room. There they pounced on the puzzles. They eviscerated Sector Z, they gouged out Vinicius Reinaldi's Sunny Day. They shuffled up all of the sunrises and sunsets until they were indistinguishable from one another. Then they threw all of the pieces into a big heap on the floor and war-danced around it. They stamped, they stomped, they hooted and hollered until the head nurse came barging in and ordered them to return to their respective rooms. But by this time, the damage was done. No one would ever be able to make an eyeless sphinx. The age of legless ballerinas' mouthless portraits was definitely no more.

Alicia left the hospital the next morning, and was never so happy when the taxicab dropped her off at her own little abode. She was surprised when ten year old Kiersey and six year old Max came running out the front door to greet her. She looked at them, in their beautiful, golden faces, and hugged them, promising to never let them go. She went into the house to find her phone, locating it on the charging dock on the master bedroom nightstand, with a cracked screen from when she threw it. The push notification for the missed calls and messages was not a number but merely an exclamation mark. She knew she had a great many calls and explanations to make, but her first order of business was to see Derek. Kiersey, when asked, said he made a run to the store right before Alicia came home.

How terrified she'd been that afternoon, so frightened that all she'd wanted was oblivion. Well, she'd had her fair share of oblivion, and she had no desire for a Diazepam tablet. In fact, her whole body resisted at the thought of another drug in her system. Alicia no longer wanted to fuzz the sharp edges with medication. She wanted them sharp.

She found Derek in her contacts and elected to call him — the phone barely rang once before a familiar country twang answered. "Hello?" said the voice, aside from her children, she loved dearest in all of eternity.

"It's me, Derek. I'm home."