Excerpt: The Asylum Diaries

"They will continue to strip me down, layer by layer, until they reach my sinful core, the root of my identity, wherein they will twist and shape it to their liking, and I will be utterly helpless in the face of their powerful manipulation. The day will come where I am no longer able to think, to use the words I love and cherish, which is why I must do it now, while I have the chance. My thoughts take the shape of striking fruit trees in the summertime; their branches, heavy with red, rosy apple flesh, hang temptingly over me, and I can pick whichever fruit of my thoughts I choose. Sometimes there is a pattern – I see them above me and I pick the fruit deliberately, purposefully. Other times I like to think at random, so I pick whichever fruit catches my eye first, rapidly throwing away the ones I have used to put a new and exciting thought in its place. This is dangerous, and it fills me with both excitement and dread, though I cannot think randomly too often. They do not like spontaneity, and I will not bite the hand that feeds. Never.

The dark sky seeps through the tiny cracks in the blinded windows and snakes underneath the cold metal door keeping me captive. I don’t resent it as such, as it swirls around in the empty air and I watch the meandering patterns with fascination – but I know what is to come from this. The self-same event occurs every night, though the hue of the sky often changes somewhat. Sometimes it rushes in with a deep blue colour, indigo in tones, and hangs in this dead air like a lost cloud; other nights are black, as this one is, but speckled with points of light, masquerading as stars, whilst some swirl with burnt orange hues marbled with intense blues, portraying the stains of the polluting glow of thousands of violently glaring streetlamps. Tonight the room is filling, ever faster, with the rare, jet-black sky I can see so clearly. I close my eyes as the night finally surrounds me; I inhale the night deeply and the darkness prevails, seeping into my body and lulling me helplessly into a dead, dreamless sleep. My final thoughts concern the world outside, as they so often do; at this time, I focus on forests and trees, their leaves stained with the ink blots from the sky above, thrashing in the howling, Arctic winds and framed beautifully in the ghostly moonlight, which shivers coolly over the many tree-tops. It is a perfect, natural scene that I hold just behind closed eyelids as sleep finally pounces upon its prey, taking hold of my poisoned body. The scene fades, dripping away and out of my mind like water out of cupped hands as a sentence, an urgent and irrevocable command comes to life in my head, superseding everything else entirely.

Eight words ring true in my ears: I will not bite the hand that feeds. One day, it will be the only truth I have left."