The Asylum for Wayward Victorian Girls by Emilie Autumn

Author:Emilie Autumn [Autumn, Emilie]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: The Asylum Emporium
Published: 2017-06-22T07:00:00+00:00

Asylum Letter No. XXXV

During what was left of the day and much of the night, I have fallen in and out of a feverish slumber filled with shapeless phantoms and watery visions, and I fear that my miscarriage has left me unwell. Though I had not known it was coming, I am hardly surprised. It happened to one or the other of us far too often; we are not fit to sustain life within us—we have barely enough for ourselves. I am glad to have it ended by nature rather than the ministrations of a visiting surgeon with rusty tools and careless hands.

As I lie in the black, scribbling these words without the aid of sight, I hear a sort of creaking—quiet, and very far away. It grows louder, closer, and, finally, I recognize the turning of wheels grinding upon the cobblestone drive outside. I rise from my straw to look out, and see an open cart being pulled by a hackneyed old horse. Even from far above, I can detect a dark figure perched at the front of the cart, the heavy contents of which are covered with a cloth.

The clock in the Entrance Hall downstairs strikes four. Morning, but still dark, the moon glares down upon the courtyard, casting a garish glow upon the scene. I watch the cart until it turns the corner of the building and I can see it no more.

As the creak of the wheels grows ever more distant, my awareness turns to the frantic muttering emanating from the cells round me. Someone begins to shriek, high-pitched and panicked. Veronica raises herself slightly.

‘Ladies, please!’ she shouts.

‘It’s four o’clock in the morning, V . . . where was that cart going at this hour?’ I ask her.

‘There’s a ditch, Em . . .’ she says, sleepily, ‘somewhere in the field . . . it goes there . . .’

‘A ditch? Why? What for?’

But, even now, I know.

‘The . . . the Death Cart, they calls it . . .’

Yawning, Veronica lay back.

‘Takes the bodies to be buried in the ditch each night. No, not the ditch, that’s wrong . . . what’d she say it was . . . the Pits! Yes, the Death Pits. ‘Eard it for the first time last night when you was out like a stone. After you left, they shut down the Gallery . . . bad press, they said, which addled me as I was always taught there weren’t no such thing as bad press.’

‘It comes every night?’

‘We dies every day.’

I had hoped, against all reason, that our bodies were hidden away in a forgotten churchyard, buried with some version of dignity . . . and all this time, the Death Cart had been making its ghoulish rounds. It did not pass by the Eastern Wing of the Asylum housing Ward A, and so I had never heard it until this night.

From the cell next to Veronica’s and mine, a girl is sniffling. She is repeating a name.

‘Jenny . .

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