Slenderman by Kathleen Hale

Author:Kathleen Hale [Hale, Kathleen]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Social Science, Violence in Society, Disease & Health Issues, True Crime, Murder, General
ISBN: 9780802159809
Google: dKyXzgEACAAJ
Publisher: GroveAtlantic
Published: 2022-09-15T20:47:50+00:00

Chapter 33

When Morgan arrived at Winnebago for her competency screening, she was placed in Petersik Hall, the hospital’s maximum-security, short-term holding unit. As the youngest patient by at least a decade, she felt uncomfortable around the adult patients, many of whom wore diapers and paced the hallways screaming. Winnebago no longer provided its residents with hot baths and relaxing massages, there was no lolling on the lawn; instead, PCTs strapped unruly individuals to boards and lassoed their faces with “spit hoods.” Every day at 8:30 A.M. and 4:30 P.M., patients were allowed to spend thirty minutes in small, outdoor pens surrounded on all sides by razor wire.

A few leisure activities remained, most of them in the form of markers and crayons. Artists cogent enough to follow instructions were allowed to make inventory for the hospital’s Log Cabin Gift Shop, but even this was more of an assembly-line job. Log Cabin supervisors prohibited patients from designing their own products, making them choose from a strict list of preselected items with cheerful phrases painted on top, such as a wooden chair with SIT AND CACKLE A WHILE painted on its seat.

With little else to do, patients at Winnebago watched television shows like The Voice. Sometimes they switched on the news and Morgan’s face appeared, and patients pointed at her, laughing: “Hey, that’s you.”

Feeling scared and out of place, Morgan clung to her hallucinations for friendship. When asked how she might feel if she were to receive drugs that made Voldemort and the others disappear, Morgan began to cry—something that would later be used against her in court—but she was never offered medication.

“I like seeing things, I like hearing Maggie,” she said. “Seeing my friends, none of these things are dangerous. These friends can’t disappear. They are important to me.”

In Petersik Hall, patients could check out small radios and bring them into their rooms. Morgan’s bed scared her, so she sat on the floor for hours, listening to the radio and making up music videos in her head. In one of her favorite songs, a singer crooned about a toxic friendship, offering to save a seat for his former friend in hell, just like Anissa and Morgan used to save seats for each other on the bus.

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