“Howdy newbie.”
Gigi jumped back in her seat, startled at the presence of a stranger. Standing before her day was a seemingly older girl dressed similarly to herself, clad in dull colors and faded jeans that didn’t quite fit her frame, frayed roughly at the ends. She had been sitting at the small table in the corner both times she had left her room over the course of the past two days, finding the loud disarray of the shared common area to be far more unsettling than the overbearing silence of her solitary confinement.
The blonde had already begun feeling unhinged inside the asylum. The tormented sounds of echoed screams, sobs, and screeches kept her up at night, and woke her that next morning. The rust and mysterious stains and splatters of aged blood, the insanity of others who were kept at Briarcliff, the clearly disturbed possession of darkness that filled the atmosphere.
Even now, the female voice singing the same French radio song over and over again wasn’t enough to drown out her internal voice, screaming at her for being all the bad things that she had become. Adults and younger people alike ran amuck throughout the cement space, some screaming, some sobbing, some rocking back and forth in a manic state, disturbed all the same.
The unknown girl took a seat in the rickety chair across the tabletop from her, not even flinching at the chaos around her as she pondered aloud. “What’re you in for, beautiful?”
The younger girl couldn’t help but wince at the sincerity, at the feeling of talking to someone again. Things went so wrong so fast and it was all too strange for the feeling of sickness to do anything but grow heavier and heavier in the pit of Gigi’s stomach. She looked downward at the chess pieces in front of her, the visions of little figures, bishops and rooks and pawns blurring from the tears welling in her eyes once more. The past two nights had been long, occupied by loud, wrenching sobs and quiet, almost inaudible prayers for God to fix her, that she’d escape one day soon somehow.
“I… I don’t…” she mumbled, words getting lost as she shook her head. “I don’t know why I’m here,” the blonde spoke falsely, slouching into the worn wool of her cardigan, an aching sensation pounding in her brain. The lazy spinning of the scratchy record in the background of the open center was doing her head in, even when she was only forty eight hours into her undetermined stay at Briarcliff. Not that she could understand the song’s French lyrics, but the noise was mind numbing and forced her to think of Nicolette and Jaida. Of flipping through French fashion magazines overtop of the silk sheets of Jaida’s bed covers, admiring the garments draped on pretty women. “W-Why are you here?”
“Nothing as emotionally upsetting as you, surely,” she snickered, moving one of her little white towers nonchalantly as she spoke. Her brows furrowed as she gazed into the board, lower lip making its way between her teeth through her concentration. “I got caught making out with a school teacher, mom lost her shit, and now I’m here, happily inhabiting an illegal insane asylum and tormenting sexually confused little church girls that come through every now and then,” she winked, making Gigi squirm a bit in her seat. She leaned back, chair close to tipping backward as she posed a curious face, tongue in cheek as she gazed holes into the blonde’s gaunt face.
“What?”
“You’re absolutely, exceptionally pretty. Really, Cardinale better watch her ass if you ever get out of here and make it to Hollywood sweetheart,” she smirked. “But you’re a damn awful liar. Not that I can fault you for it, I bet they didn’t teach you that while you were on your knees every Sunday.”
A burning shame was growing in Gigi, and she couldn’t pinpoint one source to attribute it to. For liking the interrogational interest in her from a total stranger, some random girl who looked like a circus-clown, but was probably some sex-crazed maniac on the inside, she didn’t even know her name. For being a sinner, for being awful enough to deserve getting thrown into the loony bin. For what she did
Her teeth were pretty, a pearlescent white color that seemed artificial. “My name is Crystal, by the way. I can see it in your head that you were wondering. And your name is Genevieve . You know those nuns should really stop leaving case files open on their desks when they lecture me. I know I’m a dyke but I can still read,” the ginger girl babbled on, “But I’m just gonna call you Gigi-“
“Please don’t call me that,” she interrupted, feeling her cheeks turn red as Crystal’s eyes widened at her outburst.
Her Cheshire grin only grew, clearly intrigued as she pushed the other girls buttons. “There’s that attitude, I knew you had to have some kind of personality considering how fiesty you were when they brought you through on your first night.”
Genevieve sunk into her chair, arms wrapped around herself as she remembered being dragged from her home, arms bound behind her back in a canvas jacket as she screamed for her mother. She had begun kicking the moment a muscular man in all black had attempted to escort her from the backseat into the large, architectural asylum. She had sobbed and screeched until her throat was raw, begging for them to let her go home, to let her leave. She was in too much pain to care that she was causing a spectacle in front of strangers, as she once would have before, she was dragging her feet and resisting being dragged down the hallway until an unsterilized needle forcibly punctured the soft skin of her neck, making everything blurry all of a sudden. Gigi had woken up in the middle of the night in a tortured haze so numb she had her skin raw to a point of blood streaming down her forearms as she cried. She felt humiliated, knowing that her only chance at finding a normal friend in this awful situation had been ruined by her psychotic outburst.
Clearly Crystal had noticed her quietness at the mention of Gigi’s forced entrance into Briarcliff.
“Hey, hey,” she faltered, making a motion to touch the blonde girl’s sweater clad palm but stopping herself before their hands touched. Crystal had been locked away long enough to know that eyes were what the supervising nuns kept on her, not ears. They could care less what words left her mouth so much as she wasn’t participating in any homosexual physicalities. “I know you’re scared, and that seems like a new feeling for you. But as long as you don’t do anything at a heightened level of crazy, nothings going to happen, okay? They won’t put the work into fixing you if you don’t let them know there’s anything to be fixed, okay?”
Sniffling, Gigi shook her head, eyes an angry red color as she wiped at them with her sleeve. “Wh-what do they do to fix you?” She whimpered, panic leaking into her voice. “O-oh sweet Jesus what are they gonna do to fix me?” She felt a tightness creeping over her chest, mind taking her to the darkest crevices between Crystal’s words. “I-I’m gonna d-die in here-“
“Calm down, pretty girl, you’ve gotta take a breather. It’s not so bad when you act in line, drugs, electro-therapy if you’re really messed up, a little non-consensual conversion therapy if you’re a raging homo like myself, you’ve got nothing to worry about baby Geege,” Crystal assured, moving another chess piece as if she hadn’t been enhancing Genevieve’s fears.
“You don’t get it,” she whispered, voice breaking beneath her words. “I-I really messed up,” she wheezed, feeling faint.
“Oh come on, what’d you do. Hold hands with a boy? Let alone, kiss one of them? You’re a token little church girl, what could you possibly have done?”
“I killed my dad,” Gigi whimpered, hot tears falling down her gaunt cheeks as Crystal’s mouth fell open in shock.