Chapter 4 – Rutledge Asylum
November the 4th , probably one of the worst
dates of my life. I was transferred from Littlemore Infirmary, to Rutledge
Asylum where I’d undergo tests on how my mental state was handling things.
And there it was again, the daydream. After so long
without having it, it finally came to me; the bright colours, the wonderful
views. But for some strange reason it wasn’t the same, it was darker, sicker.
The dream came to me whilst I was in a stretcher on the
way to Rutledge, but I didn’t travel to it down the rabbit hole. It seemed like
I was there for a while, and that I never left. Its beguiling fragrance now
distinctly suggests a decaying corpse. I found myself on the side of the path
near the hatters tea party table and cottage. But for some reason I couldn’t
see it, there was no table to be seen only broken china cups and saucers
everywhere. I couldn’t believe my eyes when I saw it, the once colourful
exciting place where I drank tea and ate muffins and talked about how wonderful
this and was, it’s all gone, as if there was some massacre or fire… a fire?!
What if the fire that happened in real life, caused it to have an effect on my
dream state, maybe I ruined wonderland and killed all the animals and people
with it, what have I done?
I woke up with a sudden prod in my arm, as though I was
just drugged… turns out I was, it was some sort of anaesthetic to help me rest
easy but to the point to put me to sleep. My Doctor, Heironymous Q. Wilson was
the person to take my examination first, and he presented me blind, deaf and
dumb just like the nurse in Littlemore did, but I wasn’t and I don’t understand
how they haven’t classed me as normal yet! I could hear every word they were
saying, and I could speak but I just haven’t tried to yet. The drug they gave
me numbed my tongue and for that I wasn’t able to talk but make noises, which
clearly made me sound a little bit mad… okay maybe very mad but still, I wasn’t
blind nor was I deaf! Don’t know about dumb though, didn’t really have a maths
exam to test my knowledge.
During my examination the drugs they gave me caused me
to talk for the first time after a couple of hours of it wearing off.
‘Wonderland’
‘Alice… must save… Wonderland’
I bet my doctor thought I was fucking nuts… oh god did I
just swear?! My mother would not be happy, then again she never was happy...
Sorry about that, so yeah I started talking about
wonderland, I couldn’t help it, it wasn’t my brain speaking it was something
else, something inside me bringing out these words and thoughts of Wonderland,
why do I need to save it? What’s causing me to say these things? I wasn’t even
saying it in my accent, because I’m from oxford, and my father was a teacher I
spoke very highly, and I spoke very ‘posh’ as such, but not extremely like some
sort of rich kid. And when I was speaking about Wonderland, I talked in a
grumbly accent, a very slow calming accent, it sounded so familiar.
After many
examinations, my Doctor could finally cut down words and sentences and even
paragraphs of my outbursts of my ‘insane fairy tale’
But what he
didn’t know was that whilst I was supposedly ‘muttering’ these words of
wonderland, I was experiencing every single bit in day light circumstances, I
was in wonderland… whilst my eyes were open, meaning I was awake the whole
time. I couldn’t see clearly what was happening, but I could see that
wonderland was getting darker and sicker again but this time there were
different creatures, almost like someone is creating them.
There were
dolls, a lot of dolls, dolls that I’d never seen before. They were half dead
mostly, some of them not even walking straight due to no eyesight. But they
were covered in red, yet it wasn’t blood? Because they were dolls, and for some
reason they were trying to attack me. Everywhere they walked, the grass became
darker, and mossier almost as if the dolls were creating death as they walked.
There were
other things too, before I was about to wake up, there was this human like
creature, dressed in a deep blue blazer and a bright red tie. At first glance
he looked like a human, he had snow white like skin, and as skinny as an
anorexic on a good day, but there was something different. After a while of
trying to clear my mind to help clear my vision, a sudden shock went through my
system when it turned out that this humans face was one of the Jabberwocky
face!
My heart
started to beat faster as the creature began to walk faster towards me,
stumbling on uneven ground as though it was a toddler, its hands transformed
into long, slimy claws as though it was in a battle with a slug. Blood red eyes
were staring right through into my soul as I heard its breath getting louder,
and it sounding more hungrier by the second, whilst drool was dripping down
from its snake like mouth.
‘You
selfish, misbegotten and unnatural child! You smelled the smoke, but you were
in dreamland having tea with all your lovely imaginary friends. You couldn’t be
bothered. Your room was protected and spared while your family upstairs roasted
in an inferno of incredible horror! It was all your fault Alice Liddell, it
will haunt you forever’
At this
moment in time I knew then that the Jabberwocky was a manifestation of the
survivor guilt over the death of my family, did he not know that I knew it was
all my fault? Was he not smart enough to realise that I knew the death of my
own family was going to haunt me. My mind was already making up stuff when they
were alive, I don’t know what my mind is capable of.
At this
point I jolted awake as they were trying to put leeches on my skin to anger me,
they thought the leeches were why I jolted, but much to their annoyance it
wasn’t. I was still non-responsive.
‘In all my
years here at Rutledge, ive never seen anything quite like it, no treatment
seems to move her! I thought I had her when we put the leeches on her’
‘When I hold
a flame to her dark blue eyes nothing in her vacuous gaze betrays the faintest
glimmer of response’
‘I clap a
pair of blocks at her ear. Nothing’
‘On some
nights, she howled like a banshee!’
‘She is far,
far gone, this one'.
I wasn’t
gone, I was still here, I just didn’t want to wake up yet.
No comments:
Post a Comment