“Asylum – X: Grounds for Confinement” / A Memorable Fancy #364

[Continuing the journal of Diane McMurphy, a patient in Bad Shepherd mental hospital, “The Asylum”]

     I stare out the dayroom window, the land sloping downward at first gradually, then more steeply toward the city below. Lawns. Beds of flowering moribunda dented here and there with anti-personnel mines, a few divots from past explosions. In the distance, vague outlines of fences, barbed wire, guard towers, searchlights now dimmed for day. But I think these may be only computer-generated images on LCD screens of the mind, that there is no outside at all. Down below, the city if there is a city is going about its business, clots of pedestrians looking right, left, ahead, behind, below, everywhere but up at our hill, everywhere except the one place they hope they’ll never be sent to. I used to do that, not look up at the hill, I mean. I used to live in the city, with a house, fifteen curtains, twelve chairs, three tables, numerous knives and forks, and a husband. They are all gone now except the house. The people who live there have never heard of me. The husband pretends he has never heard of me.

[to be continued …]

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Terence Kuch’s speculative fiction novels * may be purchased in paperback or Kindle formats via his Amazon author page, www.amazon.com/author/terencekuch

Review copies are available from the author at terencekuch /a/t/ ymail.com for:

    *The Seventh Effect: a thriller from Melange Publications about a new kind of bioterrorist plot against the USA.

    *See/Saw: a literary adventure from Ink Smith Publications about implanting memories – then the North Koreans figure out how to do it.