It Takes Time Turning Crazy

Thieves. Traitors. But shh, be silent. They don't like talk. The white man knocks twice on my door and I wish he wouldn't hurt Timothy so much with his knuckles.
"Wakey, wakey, Alice." The white man grins, reminding me of the Cheshire Cat.
"Call him Pussy-Cat, then." Timothy tells me, his mouth fluttering open and shut from the draft in the hallway.
"Hello, Pussy-Cat." Slap, slap. Slap. If he slapped me four times, I'd be content. Four is my favorite number.
"It's time for your breakfast and medicine." Pussy-Cat skitters across the room, grabbing my tray full of molded plastic pudding cups and empty juice boxes. 100% juice, they say, and I laugh. Nothing is 100%. Besides me. They tell me I'm 133% crazy. Why can't it be only 4%?
"No room, no room!" I shout when Pussy-Cat comes near and Timothy laughs heartily.
"I've had it with your fairytale stories, kid," Pussy-Cat is angered now, I can see it in the way his shiny head burns a scarlet red and his one wrinkle on his forehead turns into four wrinkles.
"Squinting is bad for your eyesight," Timothy informs me and I wonder how he got so smart. He knows everything. He knows nothing. I don't relay this information back to Pussy-Cat.
"Just take your pills and keep quiet. We're giving a walkthrough today," He grins and I giggle and his eyes widen a bit. I believe he is surprised. I wouldn't know what surprise looks like. Timothy wouldn't either, but that's only because he doesn't have eyeballs. If he did, I would have ripped them off.
"So dress up pretty and try to wipe the scum off of your face."
"Am I going to the ball, Step-Mother?" He slaps me four times. I grin in delight, knowing this means yes, and forget the plastic eggs and stale toast on my tray to dance around my room. White, my least favorite color, but I don't know many other colors anyway. Pussy-Cat's mustache is a bright, fuzzy red freckled with silver and Timothy's mouth is a deep purple, outlined in fours. The sounds in the hallway are a bright yellow, like the sun I never see, and the screams next door feel like sandpaper. A doctor came once, only once, and told me I had a disease called synthesia, where I interpret sounds with colors. I confessed that it wasn't a disease- it was just an upgrade. The doctor shook his head slightly and walked out of the room, leaving his briefcase behind accidentally on purpose.
I spent the next month cutting fours out of his disease papers and staring at blobs of T's, M's, and all of those other letters I can't comprehend.
A concerned woman came into my room once and asked me why I was in the crazy hall.
"It takes time to turn crazy, lady. Come back in four minutes!"

~

"How long has she been like this?" The woman whispered to the doctor, even though the girl inside couldn't hear them. Alice, the woman believed the girl's name to be, although the girl couldn't claim it. Alice had named everyone but herself. Her obsession with fairy-tales had inspired the social worker to call her Alice. Through the two-way mirror, the doctor and woman could see Alice chatting to the corner of the room and with the way she was moving her hands around, seemed to be having a heated conversation with... whatever was in there with her.
"Since she arrived and her parents say before that. They think she caught amnesia and her dyslexia and synthesis took over the right side of her brain. The left side was far too damaged to help her think clearly, we believe."
"She told me that it took time to get her to this state."
"Ma'am, she doesn't even know her own name, much less what to tell people about her level of craze." The doctor smiled the Doctor Smile and the social worker shivered noticeably. "We'll call you if she gets out of hand. But other than her main problems, she's not that bad of a patient."
~
"Not bad, not bad, not bad," Timothy relayed to back to me.
"Of course I'm not bad," I twirled my fingers around the fresh, white cotton hospital gown. In a few hours, it would be torn to shreds and the only thing it would be good for was bandages when I cut my feet on the nails sticking out of the floorboards. The party was coming and even though I shout no room, they make room. They always make room, with their clean hands and white faces, sparkling with delight like the pale moon I couldn't remember.
"I'm just turning crazy."
"You're not crazy. You're just misunderstood." I growled at the door and flipped it the bird.
"Shut up, Timothy. You don't know what you're talking about."
"I know what you know."
"The hell you do."
"You shouldn't curse so much. It makes you look ignorant."
"Who's going to see me?" Timothy was silent after my remark. I grinned with pleasure. If only Timothy knew why I was really here. I remembered once an author on television had said that the best stories come from those who live in the story's environment.
They would really dub me crazy if they knew I wasn't really crazy. I'd been in this place for the past two years all in the name of my publisher, who thought the first draft didn't have enough passion. After hearing this, I locked myself up, thought of my least favorite number to become my favorite, and read Alice In Wonderland over three-hundred times. So day by day, I'd printed page after page out into my brain, letting the words spill out as the doctors drugged me up. A few more months and I'd let up on the craze, showing them I really had changed for the better.
It takes time turning crazy, though.


Multiple personalities are entertaining. Even more entertaining to write about.
-Float Like a Cannonball
Kaila Nicole

Things Everyone Should Hate About Winter

1. Static.
2. Light switches and static electricity.
3. Car doors and static electricity.
4. Dull gray skies.
5. Dull gray skies that don't produce snow.
6. Misshapen snowmen who look like they're in the process of some form of asexual reproduction.
7. Slick driveways.
8. The idea a large, fat man in red is allowed to come into your house every December 24th and if you call the cops, they just hang up on you.
9. Yellow snow.
10. Brown snow.
11. Red snow. O_O
12. Ice cream always tastes better, but it is hard to drive and eat Rocky Road on slick roads.
13. You get weird stares for eating ice cream when it's cold.
14. You wonder if there's some social law against eating ice cream when it's cold and this gets your mind off of the slick road.
15. You crash and the police officer responding to the crash takes a look at your damaged ice cream cone and shakes his head.
16. Your toes and feet cry out for fresh air. You end up wearing ear plugs so you don't have to hear them. They respond by giving you athlete's foot and making it uncomfortable in public showers at the gym.
17. Moms at Wal-Mart fighting over Tickle Me Elmo's and Hannah Montana holiday collection dolls.
18. The Salvation Army ringers. They ring their bells again and again and again until the sound is implanted into your brain and the only way to make it stop is to tackle the Santa guy, but that would be a violation of social law, so you go around for two hours with ringing in your mind. You now despise Santa Claus for another reason other than breaking into your home.
19. Someone always ends up dying and you worry they won't be able to crack open the frozen ground, so your house will get voted on to keep the body.
20. After said body is kept in your garage for a few days, you notice that packs of hot chocolate keep disappearing and ending up in the toilet. No one else lives with you.
21. 25 Days of Christmas on ABC Family always features those cheesy movies in the month of December. You don't hate this, but you hate to have to lie to your boss again and again about your "stomach flu" in order to watch Frosty the Snowman.
22. You run out of tissues for your cold after watching Frosty melt.
23. All of those family members you've never heard of keep sending you Christmas cards. The only thing you've bought for a kinfolk is a beer last Sunday when you went out with your sister to the bar downtown. You throw away the card.
24. The body is gone from the garage, but the hot chocolate packages keep disappearing.
25. Christmas. Songs. Nonstop.


-Somewhere Only We Know
Kaila Nicole