Asylum Story

“Granted I am an inmate of a mental hospital but that doesn’t mean I am mad you know.” People gathered around when Chris spoke; he had a way of attracting attention and keeping it.
“I mean who is to say who is crazy and who isn’t? Aren’t we all just different from the norm? Why does that automatically make us crazy?” He looked at the group assembling around him in the rec. room. Each of them was nodding thoughtfully to themselves, drinking in the Chris’s words.
“Wait a second,” floated Billy’s voice from the smoking area. “What about bird lady?”
“Oh Billy, keep a lookout will you? The Bitches won’t like this.” The “Bitches” were Chris’s name for the mostly quite nice nurses who ran the place.
“Sure thing Chris.” Replied Billy, moving swiftly to the door.
Chris climbed onto a table to look over the heads at bird lady. She was nesting in the corner, all her belongings drawn around her, her white hair sticking straight out from her head in tufts and her remarkably claw like fingers ready to swipe at whomever came near.
Chris cringed as their eyes met for a second.
“Cookoo Cookoo.”
Chris quickly sat down crossed legged.
“Or what about Doug?” came a voice from the assembled. The man on the table looked over at Doug, a twenty-something guy with a perpetual angry look in his eyes. Doug paid them all no attention, instead just went on muttering to himself about how he was going to murder everyone around him, accompanying it all with violently expressive hand gestures and the odd sound effect thrown in for good measure.
“Well OK, maybe there are one or two people here a couple of cards short of a full deck...” The speaker conceded. “But... I’m willing to bet that the majority of people in this room aren’t mad at all!” In response to their sceptical looks he pointed at one of the men. “Take Charles here for example.” Charles was a forty three year old, pot bellied man who had a habit of wrapping his head and shoulders in tin foil and hiding under his bed. “For all we know there might really be aliens after him!”
“Of course they are after me!” yelled Charles indignantly, “That’s what I’ve been trying to tell you all! They got me once before,” He pointed to a scar that ran all the way across the top of his head “But I escaped and now they’ll stop at nothing to get their hands on me again.” He paused, looked about him and drew closer to the table. In a barely audible whisper he said; “I know their secrets you see.” He stopped, clapping his hands over his mouth as if he had said too much and ran to the window to check the sky. “All sounds perfectly reasonable to me,” said the speaker seriously.
“Or what about our friend Cathy here?” He pointed to a woman in a dress so old the patches had pretty much taken over and you couldn’t tell what the original fabric was anymore. She was sitting quietly, her hands folded in her lap, smiling serenely at nothing at all. “God speaks to this woman, she is his chosen one and yet the “people” call her crazy and lock her up! It’s a complete tragedy I tell you!” The guy on the table waved his arms about to punctuate the sentence.
“Um”
Christ turned to the door, “What Billy?”
“She did murder three people you know”
`“God works in mysterious ways young man.” Cathy replied to Billy as if that explained everything. She cocked her head to one side for a moment as if listening to something very far away. “Sorry, I have to take this, it’s God.” She got up and left the room in a hurry, reminding Billy he was on lookout duty. “Someone’s coming!” he called. All was chaos for a moment as the patients dashed this way and that in a bid to look unsuspicious. The speaker climbed down from the table, walked calmly to the centre of the recreation room, took a deep breath, sat down and started flailing his limbs about in all directions, giggling manically as he did so.
Nurse Caroline entered the room in her badly ironed uniform and with straggly blonde hair that was perpetually trying to free itself from the tight bun she wound it into every morning. Her tired blue/grey eyes looked around the room, she was confused at first at the level of excitement the patients were displaying but quickly dismissed it in her mind as just “one of those things.”
“Right everyone, lunchtime!” She helped a few people here and there, staying well clear of the bird lady, knowing full well no amount of coaxing would move her until she was hungry enough to “fly” after them. One by one the patients walked, skipped and shuffled out leaving the bird lady to caw quietly to herself in the empty room.