Page 38 of Madness

It doesn’t.

Each session feels like an eternity, the minutes dragging by as I struggle to focus on anything other than the pounding in my skull and the incessant itch to cut into my skin and paint.

I massage my temples, knowing I’ll be leaving with a migraine just like I do each time.

I used to contribute to the sessions, answering Abe’s questions with enthusiasm and the hope that I’d get out of Wonderland.

That dad would see that I’m not crazy.

Now – well, now, I don’t even bother.

I attend because I have to, and despite Abe’s efforts to draw me in, I sit there in silence for the majority of the session.

I’m vanishing, my mind slowly spiralling into the madness that eventually plagues every patient in Wonderland.

If we weren’t mad before we were forced into these walls… well, we are now.

The door opens, and the twins appear through the haze of smoke. I squint at the similar clothes they have decided to wear today. The matching outfits make it hard to tell them apart, and I scan my eyes over them both, desperate to figure out who is who.

“Are they the same?” Al cranes his head forward to get a better look.

The twins stand side by side and turn their heads towards us, matching faint smiles on their lips, “We are,” they reply in unison, their voices blending perfectly as if rehearsed.

“But who is who?” Abe blows smoke from his pipe, quirking a white bushy eyebrow at them both.

“Well, I am him, and he is me,” one twin shrugs his shoulder.

“And I am me, and he is him.”

“Aye, Doris, they dae look like right pricks,” Harry laughs with his mouse, who squeaks in response.

“Are you both done?” Abe sighs, pushing himself out of his chair, his patience wearing thin, “Sit down, both of you.”

The twins do as they are told, but I still can’t tell them apart, and I find myself growing frustrated. Despite countless interactions with them since they emerged from the rabbit hole, I still find it impossible to distinguish between them—especially when they decide to act like the other.

“What are we pondering today?” Harry strokes Doris’s head as he asks, not sparing a glance at Abe.

“We are not pondering anything today. We are simply thinking of our existence. Who would we be if not for the choices we made on our journey to get here?” Abe says, pacing in the middle of our fucked-up circle of chairs.

My hand shoots up in the air before I think to stop myself, the words tumbling from my lips, “What if the choices that put us on this fucked up journey were not choices that we made? What if it were the choices of others?”

“Then reflect on whether you can forgive—not for them but for yourself. Anger is no good for the soul.”

“Fuck that!” Harry shouts, shooting up from his chair and knocking it back so hard that it tumbles to the floor with a thud, “Forgiveness isnae something the people who paid to put us in here deserve!”

Abe’s forehead crinkles, “That’s serious allegations. Eden Institute doesn’t accept bribes; if you are here, then you are here for a reason.”

“Bullshit!” the twins shout in unison again, their angry tones blending into one booming noise.

Al sits confused in his seat, his eyes bouncing between us. He settles on me as tears brim in my eyes.

The tension in the room thickens until it’s too hard for me to breathe, and my lungs struggle to expand.

I want to shout, to explain how I ended up in Wonderland no matter how much I begged them not to put me here.

I was sane once until my sister lied through her pearly white teeth the moment she got her doctor’s degree, and my parents believed her.

It’s how I found myself here, subjected to the whims of her every sick and twisted desire as she played doctor on me like she did when we were kids, only this time it was more deadly.

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