Secret places

He was always a special boy. He would sit in his cage and dream all day. It set his mind free. His favourite dream was being king. It could have been king of the land or of the skies, even the lake. He didn’t mind, as long as he didn’t comply. He felt free in his thoughts, because they were his. But he was trapped. The asylum was a place for people like him. The kind who broke the stereotype of normality and formality. The side thinkers who went a little too far for society to handle. They all ended up here, behind bars. Cell by cell were pilots, scientists, beauty queens, and presidents. He looked around for as far as the cell gates would let him. From the left side where cells stretched way down to the matrons office and the staff toilets where workers relieved themselves in more ways than allowed, to the right side. The quiet side. Where the only thing that broke the silence was Old Man Curry who, in an animated tone like a talk show host, would once a day blurt out a word of wisdom to the willing ear. He would always lend Old Man Curry an ear. “To love your doings, to love your life, or to love someone is all the freedom you need,’’ was Old Man Curry’s statement for the day. He was always awake to catch these Old Man Curry moments. It was time for him to leave his own thoughts and ponder on someone else’s. What Old Man Curry said floated in his mind like a pipeline of clogged blood diluted with semen. It moved slowly from his head, into his spinal cord and rested on his belly button. He stroked his tummy as he lay on his backside on the bed staring at the blue bottle fly as it rested on the ceiling. He had a warm feeling. The feeling pulled him into a different time zone. The dream state is a funny place to be in, because you sometimes find yourself in the same place as when you’re conscious. That’s what he found as he looked around. “That girl is love,” said Old Man Curry in a lowered tone. He followed Old Man Curry’s words to the cell opposite him to his side on the left. In his eyes she was flood rains washing away the rain. She came in three days ago. Her crime was pouring paraffin into her lecturer’s ear after knocking him out in the car park and dragging him into the bushes. She lit him up and let him burn until his brain showed. She told the judge she wanted to see answers for a certain exam she was going to write. She hoped they would show up in the lecturer’s brain, copy them quickly and sew his head back into place. The judge ruled her insane. She was perfectly normal to him. She reminded him of fallen angels, and this one happened to be walking among humans. He wrote her letters every night. He was too shy to express himself out loud. He would ask whichever cleaner who was mopping the floor for the one day of the week to slip them into her cell. They piled up at the foot of her bed and she never read even one of them. It wasn’t her fault. The doctors wanted to make sure she didn’t try anything on herself. They injected her with a chemical to make her mentally obsolete. He didn’t care. The love that manifested in him allowed him to go beyond his own boundaries and into anothers heart. His body felt emancipated. Like an architect he would draw and map out a secret piece of land where they would elope. A place where they would be free to be. He finished his design and grew very tired. He passed out on the concrete floor only to be woken by the nurses screaming out instructions from the passageway for everyone to take their pills. He turned his head to look down and found he was still on his bed. He turned his body to an angle to get a better look at the floor and saw no map of a secret place. He stood up off his bed and looked across at the cells on the opposite side and shifted his eyes to the cells on the left hand side. There was no queen in sight. He dropped to his knees and a single tear crept out of his eye, slithered down his cheek, and rested on his chin. He didn’t wipe it off. He felt to wipe it off was wiping out the remainder of her memory, if ever there was one in the first place. As the little tear dangled from side to side sparkling like a ruby, it fell and dropped on a piece of paper. The paper was shabby but not torn. He noticed it and picked it up. He turned it over and read it curiously. “It may not look like it but I read all your letters and loved them, especially the one about me being your queen and not working hard for a living. It would be great to rule a far off land with you. But unfortunately the judge redeemed the sentenced and they’re going to put me on trial as sane. Something to do with the family paying a certain amount of charity to the state. When you manage to build that land of yours, name it after me. xoxo.” The next day he was still sleeping at break time. This is when all the patients are given 2 hours to exercise their legs on the field. But he wasn’t there. Nurse Irene, one of the older residents, noticed he hadn’t left his bed and went into his cell to wake him. She noticed he lacked a pulse and called for the in-house doctors. They confirmed what she already knew. No-one knew how he died but Old Man Curry had an idea. “Love takes you places that others cannot see with the naked eye. If you know how to look you will see where lovers go. If you open up your heart you can go there too.”