The Gown by Emilie Autumn

Author:Emilie Autumn [Autumn, Emilie]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780998990958
Publisher: The Asylum Emporium
Published: 2018-02-19T05:00:00+00:00

“Are you going to die?” he shouted into her face, and she couldn’t tell whether he was afraid that she would say yes or whether he was hoping she would.

Her psychiatric doctor had convinced her to come back from New York so that they could continue treatment—so that they could find the right pill, he had said, or combination of pills, as the lithium clearly had not been the answer. Everyone was different, he had told her, and she had to be patient. “I am patient, you are doctor” she had replied, and he had not laughed.

She hadn’t wanted to come back, but she couldn’t find a new doctor that would accept her insurance, and she couldn’t pay the full price, and so she had to return. Being without medication was not an option, and so she was reeled again into the cold black pit where the darkness was waiting still—waiting for her back to be bared to it once more.

Over the two years since her return, she had been given a multitude of different medications, sometimes several pills together—“cocktails”, as her doctor called them—but nothing seemed to be working, and she knew now that it was never going to let her go. It had never any intention of letting her go. And so she took everything she could find at the bottom of her handbag until she fell asleep, and it all seemed so justified—it seemed that she was doing only what she had always been meant to do—that is was surprising to hear the anger in the voice of the man who found her. He didn’t even like her very much—she knew this. Why couldn’t he simply be glad for her? Why must he shout at her this way? She was just so tired.

“Are you going to die?” he shouted again, shaking her violently by the shoulders.

“I don’t think so,” she said with a deep sigh—the resignation of a desperate failure.

She had entered the hospital by the same emergency entrance, but she was taken to the top of the building now, where people roamed the halls, the dirty white gowns patterned with pale blue diamonds falling from their bony frames, their lank hair smelling foul. No one had any shoes, and no one looked anyone in the eye.

She was not allowed to put on the gown herself this time. She was not allowed to undress in privacy. She would not need privacy anymore. As she stood naked, her arms held out agreeably before her, the warden slipped the gown—the faded cloth of shame and degradation—up and over her shoulders and left the room.

“At least I have been allowed to tie myself,” she thought. That one thing she had been allowed to do. She was not beaten yet. She was not dead. But when she reached for the back of the gown, when she felt the edges of the opening, she found that there were no ties at all. She tore the gown from her body and held it to her face—brought the spot with the hole in the center right up to her face—and she laughed.

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