The Calling | The House of Voices #1

Eighteen - Solitary

Solitary

Parish:
His father had assured him that this was a good idea. That packing him off to a mental institute for insane teenagers, in the middle of Wheaton-Glenmont, was what was best for him.

Maybe his father hadn’t meant that it would be the best thing for Parish, but for him.

Because, what good had it done him? He hadn’t been at the institute for more than seventy-two hours, and he’d already gotten himself thrown into solitary confinement.

It was no wonder his father had sent him away. He wasn’t the kind of son a parent could be proud of. Hadn’t his mother already proved that by abandoning him?

With a resigned sigh, Parish dropped heavily onto the single bed in the corner of the empty white room. Except for the lack of padded walls, the solitary room turned out like Parish had imagined. White walls, single bed, stripped bare of anything that would help a patient feel even remotely comfortable. The room didn’t even have a mirror.

Inside Parish’s head, his inner voices fought a mental battle, trying to decide whether he should be furious over Dr. Larkson’s fascist ways, or depressed over the fact that he was a failure as a son.

In the end, his brain settled on ignoring both those topics and focusing more on the events that had landed him in solitary confinement.

What really had happened earlier? From what he could tell, the whole thing had started with Kara having another one of her episodes. He’d been sitting in his room listening to his favorite Panic! At the Disco album when Kara’s frustrated cries had caused him to wander into the hallway out of his own pique.

He’d been so confused when he saw Kara standing at the head of the staircase, futilely trying to shake October’s hand off her own. Apparently October had one hell of a grip. After asking October what was wrong, he remembered stepping closer to the girls just before his disease took over.

He felt his body shudder against the cold turn his psyche took and a second later he was hit with a thick wave of annoyance. Suddenly, everything his eyes took in made him want to fling something into a wall.

It turned out that he wasn’t the only one feeling particularly crabby. Just as he was about to yell at the two girls to quit their fighting, the shorter one started screaming.

It was a loud, ear piercing sound filled with rage, sadness and desperation. Out of the corner of his eye, Parish recalled seeing Kara and Sid cringe in pain and cover their ears against October’s high-pitched cry.

At first, Parish assumed that the girl’s scream was nothing more than a simple cry, but after a few seconds, he realized that she was screaming the word “no”.

She had been hallucinating.

His head throbbed from the noise, but the girl didn’t stop screaming. His first instinct, thanks to his disease, was to run over and slap the girl. To stop her from screaming. To stop her from possibly bursting his eardrums.

But when he saw Brent, one of the male nurses, run up the staircase and rush towards the still screaming October, his anger started to ebb away and was soon replaced with concern.

That concern only amplified when he saw that Brent had a syringe filled with a colorless fluid in his hand.

He was going to sedate her.

Suddenly, the anger was back, but this time it wasn’t directed at October. It was meant for Brent. No one knew the pains of being constantly sedated better than Parish Feltman. It was how his doctors and his father had managed to deal with him during his pre-teens and early adolescent years.

Before he’d even had the chance to think his next course of action through, he found himself charging at the nurse, who had been too busy trying to drag the unresisting October away that he hadn’t noticed Parish’s approach.

Parish heard a loud crack as his fist met with Brent’s nose.

Parish had watched Brent fall to the ground – clutching at his, apparently broken, nose – as he accidentally shoved October forwards..

That’s when Dr. Larkson decided to show up and throw both him and October in solitary confinement.

Crying out in anger, Parish pulled the pillow from beneath his head and chucked it at the locked door in front of him.

Dr. Larkson was probably a bigger fascist than his old principal was. There was nothing he hated more than people with totalitarian ideas of authority.

Nothing.

With a heavy sigh, Parish rolled out of bed and sauntered over to where the pillow lay against the wall just a foot away from his bed. It was the only pillow he had, and trying to sleep without it was like trying to sleep on concrete.

Just as he bent down to retrieve the pillow, he heard something that sounded very much like sniffling.

Confused, he straightened up and looked around the room. Obviously, he found nothing. He was in solitary confinement after all, wasn’t he? Maybe he really was crazy after all.

Shaking his head, he bent down again and picked up the pillow. Just as he’d snatched it up off the ground, he heard the sniffling again. This time, however, he was able to tell where it was coming from.

A little air vent that the pillow had been concealing.

Acting on impulse, Parish squatted down next to the vent and, pressing his cheek against the wall said, “Is anyone there?”

The sniffling stopped abruptly, and for a few minutes, Parish’s question was met with nothing but cold silence. A few beats passed with no reply, and he was seriously beginning to question his sanity when, a few seconds later, a sad voice responded.

“Parish? Is that you?”