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"Most likely I will never leave, albeit I don't want to. As far as I know this is the best place I can be. The perimeter, secured by electrified fences crowned with serpentine wire and the fortress-like structure makes it impossible to escape, or to trespass. Here I am safe... I feel safe... She will never make it to this place."
"Who?" The man sitting on the brown upholstered leather couch, his legs crossed, eyes peeping above the thin lens gently resting on his nose, staring at me with special attention, waiting for my reply.
"The Dark One." I muttered, for the first time in a non-emotional whisper.
"How are you so sure she, the dark one, would never get here? To you, or to us? What makes this place so special?" He asked, scribbling notes on a fancy professional notebook.
Standing behind the tall arched window pane, I took a deep breath and gazed into the distance. My eyes skipped over the coniferous forests that extended to where they delimited with Vancouver's Pacific Coast, and placed right where the foggy skies met the horizon's purple line. Certainly it was not the first time I had been interviewed on the matter, however it was the first time I was asked that question.
"This is not an appealing place to her. She would only starve here. Dzunukwa feeds only on pure innocent children's souls. Here, in the asylum, those who still have a soul to cling to have it wrecked, lost, disrupted. We are nothing but human carcasses, walking because it's primeval and less denigrating to find a place to defecate other than our own pants, and hunger instinct forces us to stand on a row to eat... Ha! She would never come to this place."
"Right... Now, can you tell me about that day? The day your brother, Tony, disappeared... Was that the first day you saw... the Dzunukwa?
"You mean the day he was butchered? No, that was not the first day..." Moving from the window I turned to face the man for the first time. I've never trusted psychologists. They think they know it all, yet they know nothing. But they are clever, yes, always twisting your words to their own convenience, or maybe their limited understanding of how the real world -the world hidden beneath the veils of time, of life and death as we know it; the realm of the unknown and the invisible- works out. But I've been smarter and used all this in my favor, granting a permanent residence for me in the sanatorium, out of the reach of her skeleton claws. "...Can I sit here?" I asked, my hand placed on the back of the armchair.
The man only nodded.
"It was Canada Day, twelve years from now. We were reunited in the backyard, BBQ steaming... my mouth still waters to the smell of grilled hamburgers and salmon fillets on the grill. It was maybe three past noon when mother, food plate in hand searched all the house for little Tony. But she never found him... neither did the police during the week the investigation lasted. Only his and the other two kids' bikes they rode when they ventured into the woods that day were located by the shallow creek in the woods... I was the oldest daughter, thirteen years back then, he was only eight. I should have gone with him, with them."
