Jo Stripped White

Jo stripped white

(An extract from my novel 'Unmasked')


Circuitous sounds, noises of the past return. The tentacles of dreams shoved, hoarded in a dark recess, reaching out.

Though I don't regret it.

The moment I 'flipped', the shrinks say, was my superid manipulating my ego. Did I hear right? Over the noise?

Though I don't regret it.

A crystallizing of loss, they say together, nodding and smirking at each other. Chiming. Charming!
They write something on a piece of paper, push it over, black spider on white. I make out only one word 'Others'. I eat the paper.

I remember doing that.

I am standing. The table between us has been tipped over.

Did I do that?

I am standing. They are sitting. I am standing and screaming 'the others, the others? The others are not my fault'.

I am lying on the floor, 'are they?' I whisper.

'Yes' they chime in unison, white coat expressions.
'Your behaviour crystallized in a moment of loss,' says the woman, eyebrows contracting.
'A clear case of displacement leading to dissent,' nods the man's glasses.
'Total loss of any loci of external satisfaction which produced the inevitable fall from grace'
'Inevitable?' The man glances towards her
'Inevitable!' Her pony tail sways in emphasis.
'Inevitable' he echoes, looking down at me.

Did I do that?

I want to curl my finger around a knife, something sharp at least and plunge into the heart of their cruelty but the drugs have deleted that thought before it happens.

Had they?

The table, the chairs are gone. When did that happen? The snowflakes of awareness are melting. The white coats have merged into the white walls.

They did, did they?

I am lying in triumph on the velvet floor. My head in a pool of red. Sticky velvet red. Comforting warm noises reach out from somewhere. A radio off beam. Along the padded wall, near where it meets the door, empty eyes stare back at me from the floor. Black rimmed, one is cracked.

They did.

Wait, don't go, the radio is tuning in...

'Christ, Rourke, we are dead meat'
'Not our fault if the shrinks put themselves in danger Mallory.'
'But she was under our care Rourke, and look what happened, fuck...'
'Shut up, listen Jenkins and his mob will be here at any moment, we need...bugger, too late'

Is it?

'Gentlemen, I think we all know each other, now what mess have you created this time, the officer reporting the incident tells me we have two of our best psychiatrists laid down in the basement with their throats cut. Care to explain how Miss nutcase in there got loose....'

I don't regret it.


Copyright Gabrielle Goldsmith 2014