MirrorWorld

2.

“Hey, Crazy.”

Three of us turn around. We’re sitting along the back of an old plaid couch. Red, orange, and brown stripes. Ugly as crap from a crayon-eating dog, but it’s become our triple throne from which we can watch TV, which is currently showing The Price Is Right. No volume. All the screaming gets our lower-functioning friends riled up. And since there are twenty-three of them sitting around the room, bouncing back and forth, talking to gods or plotting the world’s end, silence is a good thing. It lets us hear them coming. But really, I just don’t want to get them in trouble or hurt them. After all, they don’t know what they’re doing. They’re crazy.

Like me.

Like everyone in this place. Not counting Chubs, the other orderlies, doctors, nurses, guards, and janitorial staff, though some of them are suspect.

“Which one of us are you referring to, Chubs?” Shotgun Jones asks the orderly, whom we have deemed Chubs on account of his prodigious love handles. Shotgun is Chubs’s antithesis, a skinny man with equally thin glasses and hair.

“The only one of you who goes by Crazy,” Chubs says.

Seymour, the craziest of us, claps his hands frantically. “Crazy to the principal’s office! Ohh, you’re in trouble!”

“Actually,” Chubs says, “he’s got a visitor, and I needed to know you guys were going to play nice before I brought her in.”

“Her!” Seymour wiggles his fingers in front of his mouth. His big teeth and wide eyes complete the illusion that the man is an oversized chipmunk.

“Seymour,” I say. He stops. I look back to Chubs. “They’ll behave. But why does she want to come in here?”

He shrugs. “Some kind of specialist. Feels comfortable around nut … you guys.”

“Close one,” I say.

Chubs smiles nervously. “I’ll go get her.”

When the orderly is out of earshot, Shotgun taps my shoulder. “You ever get in trouble for … you know?”

“Breaking his finger?”

“Crack!” Seymour says a little too loudly, acting out breaking a branch over his knee. Some of our fellow “nutjobs”—the word Chubs is forbidden from saying—look up but don’t move from their positions around the room.

I shake my head. “No one ever said anything. He’s been a perfect gentleman since.” I slide down from the couch. “I’m going to take a walk. Let me know if she wins the dinette set.”

The large space is pristine. The white floors glow with a near-magical shine. When I first arrived at the SafeHaven, one word, I wondered why they kept the floor so clean. My first theory was that they wanted to impress visiting relatives. While some people are here for doing violent things, others are committed by loved ones before they get the chance. But I realized the truth after the first fight. Just a drop of blood on the gleaming floor stands out like a stop sign in the snow. Between that, the fourteen cameras, and several sets of watching eyes, committing a violent act inside this space, while not impossible, is hard to cover up. Unless you’re good at it, which, apparently, I am. Broken fingers don’t bleed.

The large, barred windows draw me toward the light of day. The outer wall is covered with tall windows, allowing those of us trapped inside a view of what we’re missing. I appreciate the ample sunlight, but it’s really just a tease. I can’t smell the rain, or the fresh-cut lawn, or anything else other than the scent of mold-tinged air-conditioning. I’ve considered leaving. I think I could manage it. But if this is where the law and society say I need to be, who am I to argue? I certainly don’t have anywhere else to go.

At least the people here understand me … not that they understand much of anything. But they accept me as one of them, even though I know, at my core, that I don’t belong here. Of course, most everyone here, save for Seymour, thinks the world would be better with them flailing through it.

The view today is mostly primary and secondary colors. Blue sky. Green grass and trees. White clouds. Black pavement—they redid it a week ago. Couldn’t even smell that. Looking down at the parking lot, I see far fewer cars than usual. It looks like half the regular staff are missing. Also interesting is an orange car. That’s new, I think. I can’t tell the make or model, but it sticks out among the various shades of gray preferred by SafeHaven’s staff.

“See anything interesting?” The voice is feminine. Quiet. My visitor has arrived.

“Your car,” I say. “I like the color.” I turn around. My visitor is attractive. Blond hair, tied back tight. High eyebrows that imply a good nature. And a kind smile. But her outfit … “You look like a pumpkin.”