City of Glass Prompt

Kailene Power

Mrs Smith

Creative Writing

17 February 2012

Granted: I am an inmate of a mental hospital; my keeper is watching me, he never lets me out of his sight; there's a peephole in the door, and my keeper's eye is the shade of brown that can never see through a blue-eyed type like me. I’m not even crazy. I was just accused so I’m stuck in here. How is a so-called crazy person supposed to prove they aren’t crazy? It’s pretty much impossible. Like who do I go to? How do I know if I tell someone something they won’t tell my supervisor and my supervisor won’t put in in my chart- making me look more crazy. I don’t get visitors, I don’t get attention. I just get a simple meal passed through the door twice a day. I mean the food is pretty good, but it’s no tenderloin steak or delicious creamy broccoli soup. It’s plain beef patties with rice or boiled chicken with mixed veg. Breakfast is usually some fruit and yogurt but if they get donations they will occasionally give us pastries. I don’t like pastries so it’s no big deal but still, very plain.

My fiance, I haven't seen since 2 days before I got put in here, and my mother is dead, so you can only guess who put me in here- my father. Just because I got frustrated a lot and had my own beliefs meant I was crazy. I believed he drove my mother to kill herself and I believed he should have been the one that died. So that makes me crazy. I would take pictures of the stars and night animals and things. So that makes me crazy. I would yell if he wouldn’t listen to me. So that makes me crazy.

He gave no signal that he was bringing me here, he told me he was bringing me to a place I could open up more about what I believe in. He lied. He brought me to this place, where it would be impossible to escape. None of the rest of my family knows I am here, so it’s not like I can ask them to come visit. I’ve been away from home for the past 17 days. All I wonder is what my beloved is thinking, and my cousins and aunts. Do they think I bailed? Do they think I got killed? What is my father telling them? Why did he even do this? I’m 21, I shouldn’t be forced to be checked in somewhere against my will. I should have been the one to decide if I wanted to sign those papers or not. But since I’m “crazy” I had no say.

I’ve been on good behavior, not really talking much in my cell, only manners, but I have a lot to say. I’m not crazy, my father just wanted me here to be out of his way in case people found out about him driving my mother to kill herself. She was already clinically depressed and he made it worse. Told her she was getting ugly from being sad all the time. Told her she needed to do her motherly deeds for me and my little sister, Emmie. It was his fault she actually went ahead and killed herself. Normals husbands, like how I would have been, would comfort her and tell her she was still beautiful and should cheer up and be happy with each other and the family.

Ugh, the husband I could have been.. it’s been 17 long days without my beautiful fiance, Guineva. I hope I get out of here soon so I can hold her again. If she ever even believes me or forgives me for being away. I wonder if she had given up on me coming back. I hope not.

Even my father doesn’t visit me. He had the nerve to put me in here but won’t even tell me what’s going on back home. He’s definitely telling them I ran away and was a coward and that I was scared of getting married. He’ll do anything to get rid of me. I don’t get it.

1 WEEK LATER

Oh my god.. He killed her. He actually KILLED her. Yup my father, he killed my fiance. And he’s blaming it on me. He must have done it the day or day before he checked me in here because she’s been dead long enough for them to think it was me.  My keeper told me the other day and I’ve had meetings ever since. Apparently there was evidence stating I was the killer. Now they want to give me the death sentence. But I didn’t do it! I love my wife so dearly. I would never harm her- emotionally or physically. I haven't been in my cell so I haven't been able to write, but today is the execution. In four hours they will be setting up the space. In six hours I will have my last meal. In seven to eight hours I will be dead. My death will be brought on by three injections. The first one knocks me unconscious after a few seconds. The other one relaxes all of my body, including my diaphragm. The third stops my heart. I would be more worked up about this but my one true love, my fiance, is dead. I would want to prove I didn’t do it, but I am the one in the mental institute not my father. This is the last time you will hear from me.

If anyone finds this, please get somebody to arrest my father. It was him, not me. Goodbye.

A few weeks later when a new patient was checked into the facility and the nurses were cleaning the room, the journal was found. Max’s grave was honored instead of shunned and his father was arrested, put on trial, and executed.