I Dream of A Monochrome World...

An in-patient recalls a time when he attempted to save himself from becoming insane by confronting his Depression and Insanity

 

I Dream of A Monochrome World Feathered In Metallic Leaves

Adorning the White Serpent and of His Serpentine Suicide

In Enthralling Agony Intertwining Vanity and Catastrophe

 

 

            Empty. Cold and empty of life, of joy, of pleasure…of hope. Eyes vacant of emotions, blank stare with no questions, with no answers. Mind thoughtless and incapable of holding even the slightest concentrated idea. Staring, yet not conscious of anything nor anyone.

            “Come along now, William,” a nurse said, resting a hand on my shoulder. “Dr. Borowski wants to see you.”

            If it hadn’t been for her disturbance, I would’ve spent the entire day sitting on this bench like I’ve done since the day I was admitted into the St. Jeroumes Psychiatric Ward.

            “There was a hole there…” I murmured softly while slowly raising a hand to point at the wall across us.

            “William.”

            “Yes…but now it’s gone.”

            “William,” the nurse’s firm voice called for my attention.

            “Silent is the mouse deep within its burrow from the hungry owl.” These last few words were whispered slowly, and I landed my blank gaze onto the nurse before standing up with the aided help from her. Although the healthy age of 23, the high dosage of medication I was put on made it seem like I was an old man moving slowly and tiredly.

            The voices of other in-patients filled the room; talking, however, not to one another but at each other. They were voices that lacked potential to engage in conversation and stimulate one another’s thoughts and opinions; voices that spoke words, but meant nothing; voices that slurred and screamed and cried, and bit words to chew and then spit out with bitterness; voices that whispered, lied, and even recoiled from sanity. But even though they were all different, it was the blank expressions and empty eyes that were all the same, all so very much the same.

            “They are dead,” I said, scanning the large room where several of the patients stayed. Some that were not completely cooped up in their little worlds of insanity were capable of playing cards with one another, but no one ever spoke unless it was time to go fish. Others isolated themselves in their own corners, their own twist in reality and delusions, while there was a handful of them being tranquilized for misbehaving and trying to start a riot. I couldn’t understand. I hated them. Hated every single one of them, yet pitied. Because in the end, I was just like the rest. Just an empty shell, hollow of emotion—at least human emotions.

            Dr. Borowski welcomed me into his small office room, directing me where to sit, and then thanked the nurse for bringing me to him before shutting the door and taking a seat behind his desk in his leather chair. There was a brief moment of silence that lingered in the air before he cleared his thick throat and folded his hands on his desk.

            “William,” he began as he pushed his small glasses up and glanced at papers, “I’ve been informed by the staff you haven’t been sleeping since the day you came here and that you never leave the bench until someone moves you to your room for bed or to meet me. I’m concerned of your…well-being. William, are you listening?”

            I stared at the floor with silence as my answer.

            “William!”

            My eyes rose to meet his gaze, the dark green orbs partly veiled behind long dark hair. Within that moment there had been a small flicker of sanity within those eyes, and sighed as I took the time to recollect lost thoughts that had been absent from me for far too long.

            “I’m trying to help you, William, but you leave me with no choice but to keep you here longer unless you find it in yourself to cooperate.”

            “Cooperate?” I questioned and then cocked my head to the side with a light grin. “Cooperation was the very reason why I ended up in this hellish place—but why, mister…why do they look dead?”

            “Who?” Dr. Borowski asked, raising a brow with a soft frown before realizing what I meant. “They’re not dead. It’s the medication—its helping them.”

            “I don’t care. I just don’t like them to be dead, Mister.”

            And I didn’t understand why, but I suddenly just wanted to cry right there. I wasn’t sad—I didn’t think so. I couldn’t cry, I felt too empty to cry. Then I felt like I was on top of the world; I could do anything and wouldn’t fail. Yet, soon enough, the very void that had consumed every last of my emotions was approaching, circling the entire room, waiting to make its move at the given opportune moment. I felt the sudden urge to vent.

            “Though it seems merely a dream now since the aging of time has drained the familiarity of its own reality, the memory’s essence itself has not dwindled into the mind’s uncertainty on whether if its lucid dreaming or not; recalling the particular moment of when I had confronted myself, in the psychological sense. In truth, I tend to lose myself in my own quarrels, forsaking the line that separates rationality from irrationality and forcing them to bleed into each other like two different colors in order to attain something else—like the color orange as the result after mixing red and yellow together. In this case, while red and yellow stand for rationality and irrationality, the color orange stands for insanity.”

            Dr. Borowski had been caught off guard when I began to speak to him with words that flowed and weren’t babblings of nonsense, but intelligent and wholesome words depicting meaning and hope. He said not a word, but merely encouraged me to continue by giving his full attention.

            I cannot say how it started, let alone what caused me to delve deep into the volumes of my psyche, though it could’ve been a passing thought of suggestion to make me feel well that had influenced me to go within myself. Recalling to memory, I had strayed into its own reality, and with the ceasing of this dimension’s time was I given a chance to spare myself from needless misery. It was a void that had swallowed me, an empty and black space that wasn’t freckled with stars but billowed thin and faintly transparent rounds of mist that whirled and curled aimlessly, a chasm of vacant emotion and thought that it left one feeling indifferent venturing through it, and then further into the bosom of this timeless abyss came an obscured light distances away, shining brightly in a vertical angle in which revealed a door from the surrounding darkness. Although perceived strange if experienced in the conscious world, by mere thought was I drawn to the door.

            As I opened the door and stepped inside, I entered the subconscious. It was an altered perspective of life in general, so alien, yet so familiar that it was like a whole new world, but a shadow of one I lived in. There were thoughts I never knew I had, disorganized, but still thoughts clinging to opinion and impression.

            The void began to mold into shape, and there was an airiness of gloom hanging about the atmosphere. The floor was cracked, curtains tattered and windows boarded up, furniture destroyed with their broken pieces scattered about the place. I felt the presence of loneliness all throughout this domain, and witnessed a shadow take form into a dark figure.

            “You shouldn’t have come,” I heard his deep and haunting voice mutter, the tone threatening.

            I stared at the looming form of my dark and hateful self, who shunned me from his sight and kept his back facing me.

            “Now, now, now…that’s no way to treat our dear William,” came another voice from the shadows, a deranged and wild looking me coming out of hiding. His green eyes stared widely with a big grin on his face, but they were so empty.

            My dark and gloomy self ignored the deranged one before returning his loathing gaze upon me. “Why have you come?”

            “To help you…to help us,” I answered slowly.

            “There’s nothing you can do, Will.”

            “But there is. If you would just let me…we can beat this.”

            “William?” my deranged self called.

            I looked over at him. He no longer was grinning, his expression blank.

            “William…hey, Mister…why, why do you look so dead? Do you dream, Mister? Do you dream of a black and white world? Do you dream of lights flashing and blinding your eyes, of tubes being shoved down your throat to drown you in medication, of an ocean swallowing ships? Do you dream, Will—do you dream dreams?”

            “I don’t understand,” I said. “what the hell do you mean?”

            He shuddered and fell to the floor, curling up into the fetal position and began weeping. He then stopped after ten seconds of crying, silence cradled the cold and dusty air, and he then stared. Those eyes. So empty, so very empty.

            “This is what you’ve become, William,” my dark self spoke to break the silence. “This is what we’ve both become.”

            “No. I won’t let this wretched persona be nursed into consciousness—I must be rid of both you,” I snapped. It was fear that made me react so sharply. I wasn’t crazy—I couldn’t be. This was not for me, I wouldn’t stand off to the side and watch this insanity take over.

            “You may try, but the end is inevitable. It is the very reason why I’ve forsaken hope.”

            “But it is not me! It isn’t me!”

            “Oh, but it is, Will. You cannot heal the mind of its dysfunction, merely alter its performance through medication. You will learn to accept the vicissitudes of fate.”

            And it was then that I hadn’t realized the deranged William had slithered his way in shadow towards the door I came from before. I went to move, to protest his leaving me here in this horrid place of my mind, but my dark and gloomy self made his shadows leap and cement my feet to the ground, wrapping around my body like black serpents. I screamed and shouted no as the deranged William opened the door, crying again and giving a quick glance. Despite his tears, his green eyes were still empty and his expression blank.

            “I’m sorry,” my dark self said and released me from his shadows’ grip right after the door closed and we no longer seen the insane persona.

            You let him go,” I said. “You let that monster go!”

            I glared back at my dark self, waiting for his explanation, yet he only answered with a stare. Weeping as I fell to my knees, curling onto the floor and rocked myself to sleep, and the dark part of myself, the depressed and resentful William, vanished as if he never existed in the first place.

            Dr. Borowski stared at me as I became silent and my gaze fell onto my hands in my lap. He sat back in his chair, sighing as he rubbed his temples, before saying, “I’ll call for the nurse, William.”

            I didn’t say anything, not a word, as the nurse came and took me out of the room. She brought me to the large lounge room where the other patients were and left me there. I didn’t stay for long, only wandered down the halls until I came to the one with the bench. I sat down and just stared, then a smile tugged at my lips when I saw the same hole in the wall. I wanted to dream, to dream of a monochrome world.

            “I dream of a monochrome world feathered in metallic leaves adorning the white serpent and of his serpentine suicide in enthralling agony intertwining vanity and catastrophe,” I whispered to the hole.

 

Author's Note

Ignore any grammar problems and whatnot, this is another pretty old piece I did back in 11th grade when I was in Creative Writing. I'm bound to go back and rewrite this--maybe make it longer :]
I know this story is pretty boring. I wrote this on the last day it was due to be turned in, so its rushed.

And yes, the title really IS that long, lol

Reviews

[Twilight]

Thanks for bringing this back from your early years in school Angel! Indeed, a mental patient will sometimes have a very distorted view of the world, him/herself and even regarding the perception of time. Some of these traits, are clearly suggested in this piece of writing.

Your portrayal of William's condition, is both quite credible and slightly disturbing. He seems to be little more than a helpless casualty of this life, in view of your description. Or perhaps, a victim of life?

I noticed that William seems to be rather intimidated by Dr. Borowski, by the way. Probably not surprising, under the circumstances which you described! Your title, "I Dream Of A Monochrome World..." does make a strange kind of sense. I understand this to be a way of crying out for a simpler world. With the addition of colour, there is clearly more complexity, and the possible uncertainty which may follow.....

[Ama May Cooper]

This is an amazing piece. A display of a vivid understanding of something so complex and confusing of the patterns and images portrayed inside ones head. A mental image that cant quite be controlled you display willaiam as a paranormal bengs parall in many cases to hmself as an indavdual an absoulutly fantastic piece