Memoirs From the Asylum by Ken Weene: A blog tour for All Things That Matter Press

An excerpt from Memoirs From the Asylum

Arthur and I are pacing up and down the dayroom. That way the aides don´t notice. As long as we look agitated, they don´t care about our conversations. They figure we must be ourselves: the simply crazy. If we were to sit down on the bilious green Naugahyde and chrome chairs and couches that have long since deteriorated to junkyard quality and talk like normal people, then they´d get pissed off. They count on us to be psycho, to appear nuts. It´s like the cops and the criminals. The criminals might not want the cops around, but the cops need the crooks so they have jobs. And, if the cops disappeared then everyone could commit the same criminal acts so there´d be no payoff for being a crook. So, bottom line, the staff needs us to keep getting their paychecks, and we need them to keep getting our rubber-rooms, straightjackets, and butts full of Valium.

But, the numbers are changing. The psycho drugs have reduced the size of all the hospitals. The staffs have shrunk; now they´re resisting every discharge. No normality here! Nobody should get out. That´s the rule.

So we are pacing and discussing the alleged newest member of our very nonselective club. Of course, it is all rumor and conjecture. The rolling TV never plays the news; it´s considered too upsetting.

Newspapers and magazines only make an appearance when an infrequent visitor happens to bring them, which is always well after they´re better suited for wrapping fish. Visitors are few and far between. We who have survived the medication boom and still live on the wards have few family members interested in us. The aides and nurses do bring gossipy magazines that they share with each other and then leave around for us. We always know the latest tittle-tattle from three weeks ago. We can always tell that our bleached out castaway clothing isn´t the latest from Paris.

"Maybe. But, then what´s to stop them from frying every nut case," I pause for effect, "including us?"

"Would you do something like that?"

"No."

"Well, neither would I."

"Of course not, but you did attack those people."

He giggles nervously. "God told me to."

"I know, but maybe God told him."

He raises his voice, always a foolish thing to do, but theology is always a hot button in the day room. "God would never tell him that – not something like that!"

One of the aides looks up at us. I catch her out of the corner of my eye, the one that I always keep directed at the nurses´ station.

"Sshhh," I hiss at him. But he is way too far-gone. God´s prophet is on the pulpit, and nothing else matters. It only takes a minute before they drug him, wrap him, and carry him off to restraints.

They might decide I should get it, too, that I have been provoking him, that I might get others started – that I might be the "King of the Crazies" – and they talk about our paranoia. I walk away as fast as I can.

Too late! They have grabbed me and wrestled my ass to the floor. I´m not resisting. There would be no point. They still rough me up. One aide, this big hulk of an idiot, a sadist too afraid to take on anyone who can fight back, smacks me in the face – no reason, just his pleasure. My nose starts to bleed. They hold me down so that I´m coughing and choking on my own damn blood. One of the nurses brings the syringe. The big V to the rescue.

I wake up the next day on the medical ward. There is a hole in my throat where they inserted a tracheotomy tube. The bastard has nearly killed me. God, is my throat sore. I get to suck on ice chips and suffer. The bastard got to go home for his dinner.

A day later I am back on the ward. One of the women patients sidles over to me. "We heard they had to give you shock treatments," she hisses.

"No," I croak back pointing at my throat.

"I thought your brains were up here," she says pointing to her head.

I try to laugh and then think better of it. I pat my ass. "No, down here," I tell her.

She is still cackling as one of the nurses came out from behind their counter with the medication tray. My pills are different. I look at them and then at her. "Take your meds," she commands firmly.

"They aren´t right."

"The doctor changed them."

"Why?"

"Ask him."

"Come on, at least tell me why," I plead, afraid of the side effects.

"We want to make sure that you behave yourself. No more incidents like yesterday.

I want to cry, but I just nod. I try to hold some of the pills in my cheek to spit them out once she has gone, but she checks my mouth and makes me take a second cup of the horrible juice they use. It tastes like a combination of the bug-juice they serve at summer camp and some powdered fruit drink straight from the army, and filled with saltpeter.

"Be a good boy," she says as she walks away. I feel like I´m a dog being patted absentmindedly on the head by a totally indifferent and unfeeling clerk in a department store. "You really shouldn´t have your dog in here, mister; but keep him under control and we won´t shoot you full of meds."

"Yes, ma´am; yes, ma´am, three bags full."

No matter how fucked your head, you´ve got to hate the drooling and the shuffling. I try to control the tics and that damned unending pill rolling. I try, but I fail – failure is in the chemistry.

To learn more about Widow´s Walk visit the video at:

http://vidego.multicastmedia.com/player.php?p=wbgzb2yk

To order Widow´s Walk go to:

http://tiny.cc/WidowsWalkAmazon

or

http://tiny.cc/BuyWidowsWalk

To learn more about Memoirs From the Asylum watch:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WGyl0JMTEJ4

To order Memoirs From the Asylum go to:

http://www.amazon.com/Memoirs-Asylum-Kenneth-Weene/dp/0984421955/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1273347148&sr=1-1

To learn more about the publisher, All Things That Matter Press, go to

http://www.allthingsthatmatterpress.com/