When I was seven or eight, My twin Brother Zean and I would get huge boxes from our fathers workplace. We would cut out the bottoms and tear them apart to make forts and houses. Though, I only liked the building part. Actually being inside felt cramped and isolating, even though my brother was right there. Now try to figure out how I felt 17 years later when I was dragged to an asylum after being accused of being insane.

 Apparently, I savagely ate a live dog who was owned by an oh so “trustworthy” old blind woman who’s just as insane as the doctors and officers who strangely took me without questioning me. They didn’t even ask for my name. They just took me. 

They put me in a straight jacket and threw me in a bedlam that was a void of darkness waiting to devour me, the small window in the door was the only light that dared peek through. I was cramped and uncomfortable. The room was eerily silent except for the psychotic laughter of the people in the halls and rooms surrounding me. There was this loneliness, this emptiness, this sadness. Three months I stayed there.

Every now and then, I’d have to cooperate with a nurse who would come in and feed me and give me medicine that supposedly helped me with my accused craziness. They all had unnaturally perfectly symmetrical uniforms and hypnotic faces, and the same for the doctors. They all looked tired and worn like they’ve been here for a long while. Like they went insane from being here so long desperately trying to cure the rest of their kind. 

After doing this for so long I had decided I am not going to stay suffocating in this place any longer. I was going to escape. 

I stood up and began jerking my one of my shoulders back trying to dislocate it to make it possible to free myself from the straight jacket. I have never dislocated my shoulder before so when I managed to do so, it felt like knives and needles cutting into me all at different times. 

I heard heavy footsteps of a doctor and a nurse outside the door in the hallway. I scurried behind the door before it opened. Then, quickly I ran around the door out into the hallways and shut it behind me. It was the first time I walked in ages, I felt uneasy after two steps and had to take a rest every now and then. The hallways had a musty, moldy smell, accompanied by the sounds of the now trapped nurse and doctor banging on the door like the many other people encased in the bonds of their own rooms of the asylum. The sleeves of my jacket dragged on the dirty floor.

I began walking down the hall trying to be as silent as possible. My breath was quiet and faint. Every step I took was with caution. My bare feet peeled off the sticky floor making my “silent as possible plan” difficult. I peeked around the first corner I came to. No one was there, Just rows of doors with the same small window as my door. The hallways were empty. I continued down the hallway of doors foolishly looking through the tiny windows to see if any psychos was there. Most people were asleep but others had a blank stare with their eyes wide open. Their skin pale as paper and their eyes had grey bags of skin surrounding their bloodshot eyes glossed over with a dirty yellow film. I felt sorry for them and I wondered, how many have been misunderstood? What were their lives like before this and who hurt them? What do I look like? I sat down for a rest, feeling queasy.

Suddenly, an unsettling raspy voice sauntered toward me, “Autumn! Why have you betrayed us?” 

My mouth felt as dry as desert sand. My heart crawled into my mouth as I wobbled swaying back and forth to a stand. I hear the person starting to creep closer. I didn’t look back and began to run. My sleeves scraped the floor, the footsteps pursuing after me. 

I was stumbling over my sleeves, the cracks in the floor not helping much. The footsteps continuing to get heavier and louder. I kept running, my breath shortening, the people in the rooms started to bang on the doors desperately screaming, “Autumn! Autumn! Let us out!” 

My sleeve got caught under my foot. I tumbled to the ground, my lungs grabbing at air. The exit door right in front of me. I heard footsteps behind me, the voices still grasping, banging on the doors still drumming, vibrating the floor. I slowly turned my body to see what is behind me. 

Nothing.

The banging and voices fell to a hush. I stood and freed myself from the  jacket and left it on the floor. I opened the door and saw the towering barbed wire fence ahead of me, I started towards it. Everything was barbed not just the wire at the top. You’d have to be insane to climb it. I stepped forward and put a hand on the fence, then the other, and started to climb. The wire piercing was my skin the whole time making me bleed. All of a sudden, I felt someone grabbing a hold of my feet. I looked down and saw a doctor holding on to me. He ripped me down cutting my face, hands, and legs. I fell. Lying on the ground in a pool of my own blood, staring up at my psychotic smiling captor, 

I slowly closed my eyes and breathed my last breath.