Fire & Ice Fiction

Bloody Beach

Lucille and I have been friends for quite some time and I enjoy her company. She's always been around to listen to my drawn out rants, and to wipe my tears. She's been around to remove me from my sporadic 'episodes' that have been going on these past couple of years. I've never had a friend like her. And I even could say that I thought of her as more than just a friend. I've tried subtly hinting to her that I was crushing on her by writing "Moira + Lucille <3" on both of our arms with marker, but she never caught the hint.

We've been friends for so long that I decided to invite her for a day at the beach. I thought it would be a great idea to go somewhere far away from our mundane lives- even if it was only for a day. We both decided on having a picnic along the shore, and then going swimming in the water after we ate.

Being at the beach with Lucille almost felt unreal. We'd never spent time like this before, and I was so excited to do this with her. My senses are so heightened; I could feel each grain of sand between my toes, the wind blowing through my thick hair, the smell of the fresh but salty air, and the food tasted better than I could have imagined. I've never felt so intensely in my entire life. It didn't feel like reality.

Soon after we got done eating we decided to take our cover clothes off and go in the water. I've never been to the beach before, so I never expected to feel this way. The water was slightly denser than I imagined, and it was incredibly warm. It's warmness struck me with shock because the weather hadn't been too hot today. In fact, it was quite windy. The water had quite a thick consistency as well, and it felt like it was sticking to my skin.

We began running around and splashing water on each other. Lucille fell to the ground and we begin laughing.

——————————————————————————

I was snapped back into reality by an ear-splitting scream that sent shockwaves throughout the room. I looked over to an empty doorway, but I could faintly hear quick footsteps that were travelling away from my room. It was then that I realized where I was.

I looked down at my hands to see them covered in blood. In shock, I looked around even more and made a gruesome discovery. There was blood all over the room. The floor was coated in it, and the bright white walls were splattered with it. A bloody sharp object was a few feet from the corpse of a young girl. She was, too, coated in blood and she was completely unrecognizable. I slowly paced towards the corpse and realized who it was.

It was, in fact, Lucille. This discovery sent me into a full blown meltdown. In a pool of her blood, I laid down and wrapped my arms around her. I cried- no, I wept for what seemed like forever. I thought long and hard about who could have done this. Could it have been me? No, I loved her too much. She was the only friend I had. She was the closest thing that I held to my heart. I turned over to face the sharp and bloody object that was only inches from my face.

It was a pencil. A sharpened pencil that could be seen as dangerous by any nurse or doctor that ran this place. I debated on picking it up to get a closer look, but I was interrupted by heavy and abrupt footsteps that flooded into my room. Not one, but two nurses accompanied by a hefty man quickly entered my room. With no hesitation they dragged me out of the room by my arms. The fatigue in my bones told me to not resist, so I just allowed my legs to drag behind me on the floor as they escorted me out of the room. We went further down the hallway and soon enough I was out of the building entirely.

If you haven't guessed already, I am a patient in an asylum for the mentally ill. Namely, its the St. John's Asylum for Mentally Ill Individuals. I have schizophrenia, and I've had it all my life. Throughout my life I've had a series of vivid and realistic hallucinations that completely remove me from reality. These hallucinations were called "episodes" by my parents, and eventually they took me to a doctor. The doctor diagnosed me with high functioning depression, and marked my hallucinations off as maladaptive daydreaming. He put me on a prescription for depression medication and sent me and my parents on our way. The medication didn't work- of course it didn't. So we went to a psychologist and she was the one who diagnosed me with schizophrenia. My parents decided that I would be too much to handle at home, so they sent me to St. Johns instead. I never hear from them except on my birthday and on holidays that I don't care enough to remember or celebrate.