Viole[n]t Obscurity Page 3

I chewed my lip and considered his words. "Well, you already said that I'm young, so I'm not an old piece, am I?"

  "You know what's interesting?" His voice rose an octave.

  "Tell me." I wrote notes on my notebook.

  "Your name, Violet. An interesting name. Don't you think?"

  I looked up, meeting his twitchy, yet somehow unwavering gaze.

  "A flower. Five petals. A color. Six letters." He leaned in, pressing his palms flat against the metal table that separated us. They were large hands, dark engravings covered both. Words. His fingers bounced still, both hands in perfect sync. "One letter away from devastation."

  "Devastation?" I asked.

  "Violent." He smiled again, making the tattoos that outlined his face, crinkle. "I like violence."

  I shifted in my seat, my skin still hot underneath my tight shirt, and yet my legs were chilled.

  Should've worn pants, Adeline.

  "You're just one letter away from being my most favorite thing in the world."

  My heart sped up in my chest. The urge to smack my smack myself grew. What the hell is wrong with me today?

  "Violence is your most favorite thing?" I jotted down more notes.

  "Just one letter. Just one letter. Just one letter away. So close. Too close."

  "Mr. Whitman, why do you think violence is your most favorite thing?"

  "Too close." He started to sing again, looking away.

  The right side of his head revealed a mangled ear, the fleshy cartilage almost completely gone. There was hardly any hair either, from his sideburn up about four inches above his ear the skin looked thick, twisted, like someone had taken a weed eater to his flesh. Remnants of a tattoo could be seen, but not completely.

  His fingers drummed faster, clinging to the edge of the table. He wouldn't meet my gaze again, looking everywhere in his small room, except at me.

  I chewed the inside of my lip, listening to his quiet humming.

  "What song is that?"

  No response.

  I leaned forward, straining to hear. I recognized it. The rhythm. It was familiar. I could almost hear the words in my head, but they were just there out of reach.

  I sat and listened to the soft lilting melody as he sang and re-sang it. It had to be some sort of comfort mechanism. I hadn't looked through his file yet – not completely, so I didn't know what sort of conclusion my previous colleagues had come to.

  "Aaron, will you look at these for me?" I pulled out my basic psychiatry package, or at least that's what I liked to call it. It contained my Rorschach inkblots. They seemed cliché, though I couldn't deny that they were the first thing I wanted to explore when I got to medical school. Movies and television hadn't failed me – I still found them equally as fascinating today. The very idea that how a person described ink on a page could give access to their mind and could reveal something they might not even know about themselves – it made my heart race with excitement. Not everyone in the field agreed with me. A lot of new psychiatrists turned their nose up at the century old practice and never used it.

  But they weren't me.

  "Aaron," I repeated. "What do you see when you look at this?"

  He stopped humming, his eyes gazing down at the inkblot in front of him while his fingers continued to tap. He looked for so long I almost asked him again.

  "Well, this is complicated, Violet."

  I frowned. "No need to make it complicated. Just tell me the first thing that comes to mind when you look at this."

  "Ah, but everything is complicated. Even old Herman Rorschach and his little ink blot test."

  I sighed. Since inkblots were so popular, I often ran into this problem, with patients being familiar with the test.

  "You see, Violet, this test does not truly describe what I see, but rather it better describes what Hermann himself wanted us to see when he created them a hundred years ago."

  I shrugged my shoulders and fingered the edge of the image. "That's an interesting observation, Aaron, however, not everyone sees the same thing when they look at the different ink blots."

  "Don't they, though? Don't we only see what we are told to see?"

  I frowned. "But I haven't told you to see anything. I only asked what it is you see."

  "I know what you want me to say, Violet." He smiled revealing straight white teeth. "You think I'm going to say two elephants dancing, and if I don't, then I'm crazy. Isn't that right?" He leaned forward, his twitchy gaze boring into mine. "So it doesn't matter what I say, what response I give, I'm either crazy or I'm not." He paused. "But you already know I'm crazy, Violet, so this test is pointless."

  "I never said you were crazy."

  He smiled and leaned forward. "No, you didn't. But I'll go ahead and save you some time. I am, crazy that is." His gaze locked onto mine, the black center like a bottomless pit, unnerving. They seemed to peel back all the layers of my skin, my body, my soul, until I was nothing, no one. "I'm getting out of here, Violet. Out. Out. Out." He laughed. A full-throated laugh that filled the room, closing in the space, sucking the air out. "This is just a phase of the game, Violet." His laughter continued. There was something shrill about it. I wanted to clap my hands over my ears to shut it out. To stop it.

  "Aaron."

  But his laughter grew louder, his wide eyes on me all the while, his fingers tapping their rhythm, unfazed by his noise, the song played on in his head. His mouth spread wide revealing all his shiny white teeth. Purgatory crinkled. The words down his jaw distorted more than before.

  I said his name a few more times, but I couldn't hear my own voice. His laughter drowned me out, where I was nothing but a fly on the wall – that's how small I was. Just a shred. A remnant.

  I tried to stay, I intended to. But my hands fumbled with my things and my feet carried me to the door, his laughter pressing against me while I let myself out. I wanted to run. I didn't. My walk was calm. Cool.

  When the door closed behind me the noise was gone. The vacuum turned off and suddenly there was too much air. Too much space in the hallway, surrounding me. I sucked a deep breath, letting myself slide down to sit on the floor.

  "Dr. Violet?"

  I didn't jump. I slowly looked up to meet the gaze of the man standing over me. He was tall – a mountain of man, though that could of just been because I was sitting on the floor. He had a short, dark, beard and a buzz cut. His eyes were blue, soft, kind eyes. Familiar. Immediately I felt better.

  "Ahem, yes. That's me." I took a deep breath, letting the air seep out of my lungs slowly as I allowed him to help me to my feet.

  "I'm Richard, the night shift orderly down here. Are you okay?"

  Embarrassment swept through me. For the second time on my first day I'd been reduced to a heap on the floor.

  Way to go, Adeline.

  "Um, yes. Hi Richard. It's nice to meet you." I shook the hand that had helped me up. It was still clasped in my palm. I let go awkwardly.

  "Likewise." He smiled, revealing slightly crooked teeth. "But are you okay?" He gestured to Z15.

  "Oh, uh, yeah, I'm okay."

  "That guy can be pretty intense."

  "Yes." I nodded, rubbing the back of my arm. "I didn't know we had a night staff orderly."

  "Yeah, they tend to forget about me, but that can be a good thing. I stay out of trouble." He smiled. "Well, it's great to meet you. Let me know if there is anything I can do for you." He wore black scrubs. They were like a black hole in the middle of all the white.

  "Sure."

  He gave me a reassuring smile. "I mean it, really. This place makes you feel a little crazy, especially at first."

  "Really?"

  He nodded, running a hand over the back of his head. "For sure. It's not like the rest of the hospital, being that we are pretty secluded – and procedures are different—" he leaned in, still towering over me, even standing "—and the rest of the staff is awkward as fuck. It's easy to feel alone."

  I chuckled, but smothered the sound when another
man came down the hall.

  "Here one of them comes," he whispered before turning away. He nodded at the man who approached and made a beeline for an office down the hall. The man was the night nurse, Henry, I quickly learned, who merely grunted at my greeting seemingly uninterested in my presence.

  When I gathered my things to leave a little later, I felt lighter. Richard had hung around, making me feel the most normal I'd felt all day. When I got to the foot of the stairs that would lead me up and out of Ward Z, I stopped and glanced over my shoulder. I should've gone on, not looked back, but some part of me wanted to bask in the end of my first day. I'd survived as the one and only medical professional of Ward Z, where the most violent, psychotically disturbed criminals in the United States dwelled.

  The face of Raymond Smithers was pressed against the thin window of the glass. It was feet away, Z01, the closest patient room to the stairs. The window clouded around the black muzzle, his breath fogging it. The window had been crystal clear earlier, free of smudges, imperfections. His gaze pinpointed mine. Black as the scrubs Richard wore. Laughter filled the air, the laughter of Aaron Whitman. It was impossible, but it was there, closing in on me.

  I ran up the stairs.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  Before.

  Aaron

  Cold. It seeped inside my small jacket. The same jacket mommy bought me last year. Size eight. Too small. My shirt, too. My belly was red. Too small. Too cold.

  She didn't buy me new clothes this year. I wish she had. I just wanted to be warm again. The snow crept into my small space under the bridge, like it had legs. It moved toward me, soft, wet, cold. My new friend, it won't leave me alone.

  It wanted to hurt me.

  I'd slept here for a few days with the cold and the crawling snow.

  Afraid.

  When I cried, my tears became the cold. I was turning into snow.

  I missed the warmth.

  I missed my mommy.

  "I'll be back for you, Aaron." She said those words when she helped me lay down under the bridge.

  "I will be back, no matter what."

  I waited with the wet snow, the cold, in the bridge, my new home. She had to come back, to save me from winter.

  "Wait for me."

  I waited.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  "Patricia, can you hear me?" I stared at the little girl across the metal table. "My name is Dr. Adeline Violet." I'd been inside her room for five minutes. My first patient visit on my second day in Ward Z.

  Her sandy hair hung long, to the middle of her small back. He gaze was blank, flat brown eyes, staring at the wall somewhere above my head.

  "Patricia?"

  I'd been shocked when I'd read over her file this morning in my office. This was an all-male medical facility, and yet Patricia Philips was a ten-year-old female in Z07. Her file revealed a myriad of tragedy – a child forced into sex trafficking by her own parents. Pornographic videos of her sold online having sex with her older siblings. The videos, a police report stated, date back to Patricia as young as eleven months old – her body violated repeatedly by all of the men in her family. Until one day her house burned down and all of her family died. Since then there had been a number of suspicious fires started within her vicinity. Notes in her file revealed the scratchy, hurried hand of nurses and doctors from previous facilities.

  "She can start the fires out of nothing."

  "It's her. She doesn't have a soul."

  "There's a demon in her."

  "Patricia, do you go by any other name? Maybe Pattie or Pat?"

  Silence.

  She continued to stare at the wall above my head. Her expression unchanging.

  Her room was neat, tidy. The small bed made. It wasn't a mess, like most little girls rooms should be. It wasn't full of Barbies or toys. Instead she lived in a steel white cell. No possessions outside of her jumpsuit and bland sheets.

  I frowned. Her file also said she never spoke. Since her arrival some two years ago, Dr. Smith's patchy scrawl said he'd never heard her utter a single word. A silent frequency. She would eat and sleep, use her small toilet in the corner, and shower when allowed – but outside of that, she just existed. Sitting in the chair she sat in now or sitting on her bed.

  I chewed the inside of my lip, considering the medication she'd been on. A slew of downers.

  Maybe she didn't need medication? Dr. Smith hadn't recorded any malfeasance or fires since she had arrived.

  Plus the damn place is fireproof. If she set a fire in here, she would just succeed in burning herself.

  "Patricia, do you know how to talk?"

  No response.

  I pulled out the Rorschach inkblots placing the same one before her as I had Aaron Whitman the night before.

  "Could you tell me what you see here, Patricia?"

  Her gaze diverted to the inkblot, but she made no sound.

  I waited. Something I had learned in medical school, and turned out to be true in the working world: waiting was key. As a psychiatrist, we were taught that people in psychiatric hospitals knew our goals, our plans – at least the most basic ones, and often patience and the willingness to wait for response were attributes we needed to emulate.

  After some time I put the inkblot away and decided to just talk to her. "The weather outside was chilly today when I walked over my from my house. Colder than yesterday. I hope the fall feeling returns and stays a little bit longer. I didn't bring my coat this morning, and I shivered all the way here. I was too stubborn to go back. I was already on my way." It reminded me of a time in grad school when I'd forgotten my jacket in my dorm and Anthony Rogers had given me his, even though it was freezing out. There wasn't time for me to go back and he suffered all evening without one. It was the beginning of our relationship – a warm memory, one that quickly shriveled and died behind my eyes.

  I cleared my throat, focusing back on Patricia. "The leaves are turning on the Aspen trees. Have you ever seen leaves turn, Patricia?" I continued, "they are somewhere between green and gold. The in-between. It's nice."

  I spent the next thirty minutes talking to her, about the weather, the trees, the sun, the wind. Had she ever experienced them? Had she breathed in the scents of the world as she ran through the yard, chasing one of her siblings? Had there been anything simple about her life?

  She's here, Adeline. Of course, she hadn't. Not in the way she should have.

  A paragraph in her file from her foster mom had stuck out to me the most. Patricia had stayed with her directly after the fire that had killed the rest of Patricia's family:

  I'd been excited at the prospect of have Patricia stay with us. We had wanted a baby for so long, but had never been blessed with one. She was our first foster child, and our last.

  She took everything from me.

  She'd been with us only three months when my husband started to change. He didn't look the same anymore. He didn't feel the same. My husband. The man I'd loved for a decade had grown cold. Different.

  He stopped loving me.

  It only took three months. Three months of the monster inside her. I knew before I caught them together. I felt it in my bones. She told me, with her vacant eyes. She was dead inside and she sucked the life out of him too. The demon in her lured him, it festered under his skin until he wasn't the man I married anymore. Until he was a monster fucking a child.

  I caught them. And while I wailed and screamed at him, he tried to calm me. That's when I smelled the smoke.

  The woman's husband had died in that fire trying to save Patricia – not his wife.

  I stared at the little girl, curious. I was far from equipped to work with someone of her capacity. Child psychology was the least of my qualifications. I was certainly more qualified to treat the most damaged adults over children. Especially children who were accused of being some sort of demonic pyromaniac sexual predator.

  Patricia was a first for me in many ways. Of course, I'd never treated a child, and I'd never had a patient
who didn't talk, at all – or acknowledge my presence, but the more I watched her, the more I wondered if anyone had ever taken the time to talk to her. The woman's testimony in Patricia's file suggested that perhaps for a short time someone had, maybe. Previous psychiatrists, including Dr. Smith, didn't record anything specific they said to her, outside of asking very pointed questions about her past.

  When I closed the door of her room behind me, I made a note to talk to her every day.

  "Dr. Violet." Christopher, the day nurse approached. "Z15 is asking for you."

  I furrowed my brow. "Aaron Whitman? Did he say what he needed?"

  Christopher smiled a crooked, knowing smile. "He said he missed you."

  I kept my face emotionless. "All right." But my heart rate picked up in my chest. There was no denying that I'd spent the night thinking about him. After I'd been spooked and hurried home, the inside of my new house had been a surprising comfort. The sheets softer than anything I'd slept on in months. The supplies in the kitchen were an array of foods far superior to the stale foods the cafeteria in my previous apartment had offered. But once I was in bed I'd thought about him. Aaron Whitman. Part of me wished I'd taken his file home, so I could look through the pages of his life and learn what really landed him in Ward Z. But I had forgotten it on my desk.

  "You're just one letter away from being my most favorite thing in the world."

  I'd fallen asleep, his intelligent gray eyes haunting me all night.

  "We need to do a room turnover for the patients today. We do it every Tuesday. Since he's asking for you, we'll start there."

  "Why on Tuesdays?"

  Christopher frowned. "It's just the day we do it."

  "Seems like a strange day – the middle of the week."

  "We have to send out the laundry to the main part of the hospital. They only accept it from Ward Z on Tuesdays." His mouth had formed a thin line, hiding the gaps in his teeth.

  He didn't like that I was questioning him. I let my lips turn up a bit in the corners as I turned away. I didn't really care that today was laundry day – or anything of the sort, but if I decided Wednesday was a better laundry day, then that would be laundry day. I knew it, Christopher knew it, and I wanted to make sure he knew I knew.