Jericho

The light has a particular stale quality, not natural; the product of an incandescent bulb. Yet it is on day in and day out. It hums a dirge: Dirige, Domine, Deus meus, in conspectu tuo viam meam ("Direct my way in your sight, O Lord my God"). I have never seen it changed.

Twice a day there is a handover. They all troop in and relieve the weary who brief them and issue some secretive commands.

They circle us hosts: exterminating angels cooing as I write these words.

I have been making an effort to remember them by name.

You cannot trust anyone here. But I force myself to eat for good behaviour.

Saffron Grounds has a holy ring to it. After all saffron is the colour of the priestly robes, for the sannyasi, the renunciates. But they all wear scrubs, medical gear. Every garden is well kept and mostly unattainable for all but the ground staff. Every room is locked. The nurses station has monitoring equipment on the desks. It looks cramped and stifling to the outsiders eye. There is no real refuge for the mentally ill or their warders before the end of the day shift. Here, once the day staff have left, the night shift is to settle in. Often the temporary staff man their posts outside on the ward but catch a quick nap on a quiet night, not like tonight.

Some of the residents are pacing again tonight. The longest residents develop a shuffling gait. At some time during the day David the pool shark handed the sole cue with no chalk back to the nurses along with the triangle and several discoloured balls. He is trusted. But if you could play for money on the warped table it would soon go. All he inherits now are his smoke breaks and his lopsided smirk.

Julie (not her real name) now sits in one of the heavy padded chairs. She fears abduction from her bedroom. During the day there is the call for medication, the call for food and the call for medication again, over and over. She hasn't been here long enough for them to grind out all of the spirit out of her.

My writing remains an escape for me. I try to write about heaven for the rest of the service users. Meanwhile the head nurse chews a slice of cake behind the wire mesh. It is manna to me, not the same as they serve to us. I wonder about the notes the other nurses make as they peer into the screens and tap noiselessly on their keyboards, drawing the mice and clicking as if to exterminate another faulty inmate's psychosis. My writing is labyrinthine though, tortuous and inaccessible.

There is a profound sense of injustice among the inhabitants of this refuge. There is the strong ghost of sedative medication administered forcibly haunting these walls.

The rooms have numbers to designate location. The nurses office is C77. It is permanently marked on the door frame. I remember this detail because I know how to play a C7 chord on the guitar when I am well. My guitar is in the nurses office. They won't let me use it unsupervised. Apparently the temporary inhabitants will know the number to call if the situation gets much worse.

Some nights are much more terrifying than others. It is the waiting for something to occur that gets me. A waiting for the end which never seems to approach me. So I start to walk. I pace the corridors but my slip on shoes are quite quiet. No laces, no clack clack heels. We're far from Kansas here. I don't know how I will handle it if I am granted the opportunity to leave.

It will be awesome in the deepest sense of the word.

C77 is a functional room with keys and keyholders and notes and equipment. It is the staff's room with desks and pens and paperwork. The office has office chairs and reminds me of the outside. All the good stuff is behind the door.

Last week, the table for our activities was heaved up and the top cracked, so it's been gone for several days awaiting repair. I have overcome my feeling of gas being piped through the ventilation in the shower for now.

I have been keeping a journal for my thoughts during my stay here. They don't know what is in it although one time a nurse demanded that I remove her name from anything I have written.

One day might come when I don't have to wait for my mail to come from the nurses station where they will monitor me as I open it. My famly visited me a few times but my words were lost on them.

I am aware of the experiments that they carry out here. After all there is a monitor placed on my phone to check my activity. And the staff who don't sleep at night are constantly watching their phones or smartwatches.

I can understand Julie's terror to some degree but I have always held the belief that it is not impossible to alter one's own dreams. I just don't like sleeping a medicated sleep. I fight it with music. At least they have not confiscated my headphones yet.

Here at the nurses station is a little place where a piece of heaven should reside. But it is solely in the interactions that the thank you cards can only hint at coyly.

My guitar calls me unstrummed. Soon my dearest. They call me unwell. It is stranded in heaven.

For now if the glass shatters, (though the mesh would keep a hold of the shards) heaven would be breached and their call sounded. It is a call to arms; someone will pin me down and the needle will come to bear on my soft flabby flesh.

Those who dare open the door to heaven with force will have their privileges stripped and be cast into solitary confinement to reflect, a guard by the door.