No they didn't need him, they were perfectly alright on their own. But, his comforting presence had left a hole, a yearning for old times. The weekly therapy sessions were attended with robotic remembrance but their heart wasn't in it. Where was Dave? They left his chair free...just in case.
Some of the inmates put on the old LP's for the afternoon dances. After two days, they gave up as the others sat around in the sunroom gazing vacantly into space, tapping their feet to some other rhythm.
Charlie-boy, still chirpy, came up with a quiz night, the others cheered up a bit. When it came to actually answering the questions, the patients were stumped. Question forty five was just an example of their inability to remember:
Question 45: "What is it to love?"
They scratched their heads, they looked at their partners hoping for a clue. They were none the wiser. The question cards were stacked up unanswered one after the other. The game passed the time, the tea punctuated the stacking.
Outside, sparrows were fighting over the remains of their digestives.
Over the wall, if they had ambled so far, they would have heard kids shouting, squabbling, screeching. Shaking branches of the apple tree in the garden might have alerted them to unruly life.
They might, if they had ventured, have pushed the gate to the clamour beyond.
Ritual had become their reality.
My mind turns to asylum lit ~ One Flew over the Cuckoo's Nest, A Fine Madness... the Marquis (since he did so much of his writing in one).
ReplyDeleteI held an empty cassette box to my ear... hear? No sea sussurating ... a faint animal sound - a fire - crackling
ReplyDeleteClosure is always a fictional device, and it's all fiction.
ReplyDelete