COMMON ROOM: A Short Story Anthology

The Voices in My Head by Katie Spektor (Wattpad username: KatieSpektor)

THE VOICES IN MY HEAD

by Katie Spektor (Wattpad username: KatieSpektor)

Mentor: Kim Savage, author of AFTER THE WOODS, releasing Winter 2016 from FSG/Macmillan

*** 

I am not insane.

Four words were clear in the muddled haze of her memories.

Four words that kept her from insanity.

But she was insane, wasn’t she? That’s what everyone said. So why couldn’t she believe them?

Why should you?

Monica clutched her head in the chamber of her bedroom. That thought, like all the others, didn’t make sense. Ever since she had been admitted to the psychiatric ward, they said she was getting better. They said the voices in her mind were the reason she was here. She always believed them. They were always right.

No they aren’t.

Monica decided to ignore those thoughts. They crept into her conscience to cause trouble. She didn’t need them. The medicine would take care of them for her.

“Ms. Jensen.”

The psychiatric nurse’s agitated voice echoed in the white bedroom. Monica turned to see Nurse Daine holding the daily pills. She took the pills from the short woman and dressed in the white sleepwear of the ward.

“This way, Ms. Jensen.” Daine led her into the endless hallways of the ward. The white walls seemed to stretch for miles, but despite the vastness of the psychiatric hospital, Monica felt safe.

Trapped.

The medicine was kicking in, so those thoughts would disappear soon. As Daine led her across the linoleum flooring to the meeting room, Monica finally felt at peace.

“Let GO of me!”

She flinched as the scream erupted in the quiet of the ward. Two orderlies were dragging a flailing boy her age across the floor. Monica caught his fleeting gaze before he was hauled into an elevator.

He had green eyes, she thought, but then chastised herself. Why was she thinking about that? He was a troublemaker who had been disrupting the ward’s peace ever since he came here two weeks ago.

Daine’s grip on her elbow tightened. Monica glanced at the nurse only to hear her mutter, “Sullivan again.”

Monica stopped in her tracks. Sullivan. Why did that name seem so familiar to her? Normally, Monica wouldn’t think twice about something. It would leave her just as soon as it had come. But this time was different. She thought he was familiar, but she couldn’t understand why. She had never seen him before in her life.

The nurse jerked her into motion and led her into the main meeting room without another comment on the chaotic situation. As Daine’s petite form pattered away across the carpet, Monica sank into her favorite chair in the corner of the cream-colored room. The windows on the far wall were barricaded with steel bars that blocked off most of the fall sunlight.

Monica thought back to that boy. Her mind recognized him, but she had never met him before. Or from what she could remember, at least. She had been at the ward for a year and she still couldn’t remember her past. Only snippets of scenes remained in her mind. There were the difficult ones of her mother, Stephanie Stevenson, who died when she was fourteen. And then there were the memories of how her mother married Dr. Marvin Jensen two years before her death.