| WARD 67 The room was vast and almost empty except for a few park-like benches scattered around the outside walls-- three, if recollection is correct, and a T.V. bolted high up on the wall close to the ceiling, seeming more like surveillance equipment than anything else. Ghosts, phantoms, and shadows... remnants of shattered lives, fractured psyches, and tortured pasts stagnated in this space aimlessly pacing, robotic, ranting and raving, standing flesh covered statues posing, expression obscured or eliminated by volumes of medication and despair. Dignity stripped, as hosed, naked in rows, the molded personhoods fused into the flood in a collective, massive rush toward the drain, and down upon the floor were bodies strewn like litter in the street. There was no other place to rest but there upon the cold linoleum. The benches were always reserved for the most agressive of the pack, some snarling and hissing at those who would dare to drape their ward-dressed bodies across such sacred spots as these, for they were the Queens of these mountains, which although very hard were at least up off the ground. It was heaven there, below so often drenched and piled with the passings of yesterday's fare, the stench of which created strangling vapors intermingling with sweat and clorox; the latter a welcome scent, but always overpowered way too soon. Shatterproof glass seperated us from them. They sat at their station, passing time, playing cards, talking, laughing, jobbing... They protected from us, and we cut off from them, the world, each other and ourselves.. not a job, but a life- less all meaningful passages for time stood still, vacuous and without hope of ever seeing the sky again. Looking up, the fluorescent lights loomed large and stark as did the realization of being there, for those that did. And only they could answer that, but most did not speak, only silently pray for the hour to come when the large iron gate would be folded back revealing another part of this tomb lined with close together rows of sheeted beds. To lay upon them was somewhat comforting, until the nightmares began. Screams split the darkness; lightning bolts burning straight thru the cover of night into dawn... those wretched subconscious glimpses into the soul, the past, or perhaps what might have been.... ....if only.... © Sarah Gallant 2001-2002 |