The coffee overflows my mug as I pour, burning its way over my hand and down my leg, but I ignore the pain as a light like sunlight impregnates my mind. Within that light, face obscured as though by a halo, I make out a shock of messy black hair. He, James, is back. I try listening for his voice in my mind, but I don’t hear anything as I once could. My hand starts to make the sign of the cross but stops in the middle of my chest. Shaking, my face contorts in an attempt at something in between a smile and a frown.
Three female coworkers, Amelia in her signature pantsuit and two whose names I can’t remember, enter the breakroom.
“I never knew any woman so disgusting,” unknown coworker number one says.
“Yes, I agree. She is terrible,” unknown coworker number two says.
I claw at the napkins on the counter. The coffee drips from my skirt down into my right shoe, a yellow pump with a small heel, turning it into a miniature man-made lake. A brown stain forms on the right sleeve of my white blouse.
“Lucy, do you need any help?” Amelia asks. She breaks off from the group.
An old image of James blossoms in my mind of him sitting at a computer desk, staring straight at me. He is young, early twenties. I do not consent to his presence in my mind. Yet, I sniff out every scrap of him like a hound. I long for him despite being twice his age.
“Why can’t I hear you inside my mind anymore?” I ask. James doesn’t answer at first. My mouth contorts, forming words silently, unbidden by myself. Letting go of all restraint, I allow the words to come out aloud. James speaks through me. His voice gives mine a slight Irish accent which I like.
“They are talking about you. They know your sins,” James says.
“I know.”
I want him to hold me like Robert never does. Robert, my husband, doesn’t touch me after what I did, neither in love nor hate.
“What did you say?” Amelia asks.
“Thank you for your help,” I say. I stand dumbly, lost in my imagination, as Amelia kneels to dab at my shoe, drying up the coffee lake.
“It’s so disgusting what she did. She is so disgusting, a monster even,” unknown coworker number one says.
Ripping my tight brown skirt, I bolt past all three of them, flying down the hall as though chased by demonic chants. The coffee squishes in my shoe as I run. The smell of it fills my nostrils for a moment before I slam open the door, allowing the chill autumn wind to blow it away.
On the street, cars inch by to work or church. I slow at a stoplight. It is red, so I cross.
“Where are you, James?” I ask. I stop in the middle of the street.
“Here, there, everywhere,” James says.
“I can hear you, but I can’t find you in the flesh. Where are you?”
“You will have to come find me, Lucy. They do not want you to find me. I am the only one who loves you. You will be my queen.”
“What are you?”
“I am a demon.”
“Demon or angel. You’re my savior come to take me away from this life of pain and mundanity.”
“You must come find me.”
The light turns green. The traffic moves. A yellow truck stops inches from me, honking loudly. I walk on absent-mindedly, ignoring the cries from the driver. I look around for James. People of all sizes, shapes, and colors surround me on the sidewalk, as different as the colorful autumn leaves falling from the trees.
“If you’re real, if you could be real for me, it would prove there is more to this world than what I see.”
I catch sight of messy black hair and grab the arm of a black coated man. He turns. A man with a black beard, nearly my own age, faces me. James is clean shaven. He pulls his sleeve out of my grasp, continuing on without a word.
“Come find me.”
“You’re a liar.”
The dome of a great cathedral, my local cathedral, looms above me. I hesitate at the familiar door, a great knocker in the shape of a lion’s head, fearing as though my hands, infected by demons, will be burned. I touch the door. Nothing happens. I enter. Services just ending, I get in line for confession.
“Demons speak through me,” I say.
“Perhaps you should go see a professional psychiatrist. I think your needs would be better met by them,” the priest says.
“I already see a psychiatrist, but they’re not helpful. I am alone in this world. I really think I’m being possessed. I fear it because I’m being unfaithful to my husband. I fear that I like speaking to him, the demon. The possibilities of his reality are great. That I could know, really know God is real. To know that there exists at the end of this world more than mere nothingness because this world itself just isn’t enough for me.”
“Being tempted by the knowledge of demons won’t give you peace. That is what faith in the Lord is for. Family, if one has access, can be a great support in tough times. Isolating yourself is never good.”
“That’s right they can be, unlike you. Thank you!” I smash open the confessional door, nearly knocking down a woman with child, and run out of the cathedral.
“I’m going home,” I say.
“Robert will not like that,” James says.
“I don’t care. It’s only a block from here.”
“Robert will not like that.”
“I won’t let you speak. You took them from me, repetition demon.” My mouth works, forming silent words, but I purse my lips. I walk the block to my old home.
The house is completely white from siding to roof. A child picks daisies in the front yard, blowing the seeds into his equally yellow hair and all over the lawn where they will then take root and grow. A few seeds escape the confines of the property and float high into the air off on some adventure all their own.
“Rick come here,” I say. I bend down and open my arms wide.
“Mommy!” Rick says. He drops his carefully collected daisies and jumps into my arms.
“How is everyone, all my babies? How are you, Mike, Mary Beth, Suzanne, and Lorianne?”
“They miss you. I miss you. When are you coming home?”
“I—” The front door opens, and I look up. Robert walks out onto the porch, cell phone in hand. To me, he is the man who touched me too much until I became too touched in the head. To him, I am the woman with another man’s name on her lips. The woman who embarrasses him.
He looked much the same the night I jumped out the window, staring down at me from the porch, as I was dragged back home by police in front of the whole neighborhood. I ran barefoot down pavement burning from the summer sun the first time I heard James calling for me.
“You’re not supposed to be here. That is what the judge said. Come here Rick,” Robert says. Rick clutches me tighter.
“I just wanted to see them,” I say.
“I’m calling the police.” I jump up, and Rick falls down, letting go of me, surprise on his face.
“I can’t go back to that place again. I won’t. I have nothing left here. All I have is James.” Rick reaches out for me, but I turn and run, kicking off my shoes to run faster. Sirens sound in the distance. I jump into a bush across the street.
“Find me,” James says. Branches claw at me, ripping through my clothes, scratching flesh. I run up to a wooden fence, flinging my arms over it. “I will show myself to you. You must look carefully. You are one of a few choices I have.”
I squint my eyes and look beyond the fence, desperate to see him. No matter how hard I look, nothing appears before me.
I dive into a bush and hold my breath. Navy blue pants walk past at a brisk pace.
“Over here,” the police officer says.
“You have to find me, Lucy. Come to me,” James says.
“I thought—” I say.
Wood chips surrounding the bush rip holes in my tights as I flee. I run from house to house in the suburb, stomping through gardens with carefully grown tomatoes and over gates with beware of dog signs. I don’t hear a single growl. As the light fades, I start running into things, a gate or a tree. In a space devoid of streetlamps, precious little light shines from lamps residents have staked in their gardens. I pick up a lantern, solar powered, and move at a slower pace.
I fear the roads. Imagining the headlights of a police car chasing me down, I take paths to avoid them. Passing through another row of bushes, I stumble onto tracks, railroad tracks. Rocks fill the space between wooden planks held down by railroad spikes. The rocks slow my progress as I continue forward, hopping from wooden plank to wooden plank.
“I’m coming to you. No matter what, I won’t stop,” I say.
“You need to bleed for me, Lucy. Bloody your feet on the tracks. Become my Jesus!” James says.
I stop and look down at the rocks. They aren’t smooth river stones. They are as jagged on all sides as finely crafted stone knives. I dig foot after foot into the rocks, numb to the pain, like a cat pawing at a soft fleece blanket until my feet are cut and bloody before continuing to jump from plank to plank, searching for James, praying he will appear before me as if by means of a magic blood ritual.
“Will you do anything for me?” James asks.
“Yes.” I pant.
“Lie down on the tracks and stay there.”
I lower myself down onto the tracks and look up at the stars. Constellations shine high above me that I have no names for. I silently beg for the stars to take me, my soul, away. Nothing happens. I get up and keep moving forward.
The days wanderings take their toll on my body.
“I’ll give a kingdom for a drink of water, even a heavenly kingdom.” I pant, stumbling forward onto the rocks.
“Father, please help her! She is not too old!” James says. I stop, looking around. No help comes.
“You lied to me! Mind rapist!” I say. The lantern drops out of my numb hands. It cracks. The light flickers once before going dark. I fall to my knees on the rocks. “I can’t go any further.”
“You have to get up and keep moving forward.”
“Why? I have nowhere to go. It’s either go back or die. Why do I want to live so badly?”
Unable to walk anymore, I crawl my way back along the tracks all the way to an apartment I know will be dark and empty. My hands and knees become as bloody as my feet.
Yellow light fills my apartment window. I get up, staring at the light in confusion. I step into the hallway and nearly run into an officer.
“Are you Lucy White?” the officer asks. He shines a flashlight in my face, blinding me.
“Yes. Why are you here?” I ask.
“You were reported missing from your work.”
“I was just going for a walk.”
“Were you at the White residence earlier today?”
“I wasn’t, no.”
“These are your shoes aren’t they miss?” He holds up two yellow pumps by the straps covered in daisy seeds, one still reeking of coffee. “You are court ordered as I understand it to stay away from your husband and children during this period of your treatment according to the judge. We found your antipsychotic pills in your drawers unused. You are supposed to be taking those, correct?”
“I thought you needed a warrant to search a person’s home.”
“You were reported missing. Your landlord let us in to search for evidence of your passing through. I will ask again. Why were you not taking your antipsychotics?”
I shift from foot to foot, dried blood cracking under my weight causing my feet to bleed again.
“They have nasty side effects such as weight gain, memory impairment, and period loss.”
“But you are supposed to be taking them under court order for episodes in the past, those of hearing and seeing things not there, those of paranoid schizophrenia.”
“I don’t hear things anymore.” Another officer walks up.
“Put your hands behind your back.” Shaking, I do as he says. He handcuffs me and leads me to a police car. The trip to the hospital is silent.
The hospital screams concrete box. The attendants look me over while I’m handcuffed to the hospital bed. They neglect my blood encrusted hands, knees, and feet. I keep silent.
“You are going to be admitted to the mental health ward here pending a trial to determine your future,” the police officer says.
I limp into a wheelchair, and an attendant takes me up the fourth floor. A door shuts and locks behind me. The windows in this area of the hospital are all blacked out with black paint. James tries to speak through me, but I don’t let him.
A different attendant leads me to a room at the end of the woman’s hall. There are two beds both a kind of rough plastic on a metal frame with only one sheet and a pillow atop them. There is a woman in the room shouting on the bed next to a blackened window.
“I have six degrees!” the degree woman says. She kicks and screams. Four attendants come in to hold her down so that a fifth can inject her with something. “Your poison takes away my mind. I have six degrees.” She is quiet. I cover myself in the sheet and try to sleep, rubbing my swollen feet together, wincing as my bloody scabs crack.
They come to inject me.
“She is right. The side effects are terrible like weight gain,” I say.
“You are lucky they do not do lobotomies, spike to the brain, anymore. Those patients would be fat alright. All they would have to do is eat like pigs,” the attendant says.
Most of the patients or prisoners, as I like to think of them, sit staring blankly at one of two televisions. The most crowded television features a basketball game. A single woman, gray roots peeking out of hair dyed blonde, sits at the other, watching a Western. Two young girls, no older than eighteen, begin a competition of which one can eat the most dangerous item in the room. One grabs an apple core. The other grabs a crayon. They chow down on their respective items. I look away.
More than anything I want to see outside. I look for cracks in the blackened windows, but I don’t find any. I stare at the windows, imagining the outside, the fall leaves, my son playing in the swirls of black paint as if I were picking images out of the clouds.
“Do not just stare at the window. Do something!” the attendant says.
I find a box of crayons and some sheets of paper with cartoon characters printed on one side of them. It is the only other diversion in the room until one of three meals or a group therapy session. The degree woman sits at that table, crayon in hand, poised over a picture I recognize from a cartoon film I watched with my children.
A precious few of those crayons are whole. The vast majority show some state of use. The worst are little more than nubs devoid of any wrapping by which one could ascertain their color until used. The people in the mental health ward, including myself, appear much the same to me at first glance, so broken, unable to show their colors until given a closer inspection. I turn the paper over to the blank side and draw daisies floating through an open sky. I’m not much of an artist.
“I have six degrees you know,” degree woman says.
“I know,” I say.
“What do you know! Nothing.”
“You’re right I don’t know anything. I don’t have any degrees.”
“Yes.” She nods.
I find myself staring at the black windows until someone yells at me. Time passes on the clock, so I always know the hour. The time of day I can tell by which meal comes out. I try to keep track of the days on the cartoon character sheets by making marks, but degree woman keeps scribbling over them.
“You are going to court today,” the social worker says. I jump up to look for the crayons, thinking I am being scolded again.
They chain me up hand and foot like a trussed pig, and I hobble over to a wheelchair. Rolls of fat pop out in the spaces between the buttons of my white blouse, the one with the coffee stain on the right sleeve. Despite a wash in the hospital, the stain persists.
The light outside blinds me. The chill air rips through me. I breathe it in, gasping in my glee before being met with the back of a van to which I am chained for the ride to the court. There are no windows. It is pitch black inside.
At court, I imagine I look like a murderer as I hobble up to the bench. The judge looms over me.
“You will be placed in a group home for the foreseeable future until such time as you prove you can be trusted to act as a civilized member of society,” the judge says. “The social worker will help you get onto social security. Your needs will be met by the facility.”
A police officer removes my handcuffs from my wrists and ankles. The social worker leads me to a car. It has windows I can see through. My eyes greedily munch on the scenery.
I sit on the bed at my new home. I have my own room. I wonder what will become of my things at my old apartment. I am told I can’t retrieve them, and no one will be getting them for me. All I have are the clothes on my back, the ripped, stained, and now ill-fitting blouse and skirt of my day of wandering.
There is a knock at the door. I open it. Amelia stands there, in a pristine bright yellow pantsuit, a vase full of daisies in her arms. She hands the vase to me.
“These are for you. I heard you liked them. I hope you’re feeling better,” Amelia says.
“Oh,” I say. I stare at the daisies. Amelia backs away. “Thank you.” I shut the door. I stand there and listen until Amelia’s footsteps recede.
I let James speak for the first time since that night on the railroad tracks.
“I did not choose you.” James says. “I do not want to speak to you anymore. You did not continue forward. You are stupid.”
I move my lips, but no sound comes out. He is gone.
Yellow light pours in from the open window, heating the room. Dropping the vase, daisies spilling out over the floor, I lock the door and sit on the bed right in the middle of that heat.
“I won’t run anymore. Would you like me if I had a degree? Would that make me smart?”
My mind is completely black day and night. I can’t imagine anything. There are no black swirls to form into pictures. The government gives me free money just to live. I can survive like a fat rat in a cage on that alone. Yet, I am going to go to college.
As the days pass, the room at the group home that I inhabit fills with used books and scraps of paper with the various things James said to me written on them. I read, but the words don’t stick in my mind. Blackness consumes them. Perhaps, if I have a degree, I will see someone better. Perhaps, if I prove myself smart, they will like me. I just hope it doesn’t take six degrees.
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