Bridge of Insanity

“I am a destroyer. I ruin everything, and anything I touch turns to dust, to nothing, to trash.”
“So… why are you here? That doesn’t really make any sense, like what did you do?”
         
         I knew I said the wrong thing somehow, her pale face contorted and her features drew in narrowly. Her brown eyes glistened with tears, but she was fighting it back. She dug her yellow teeth into her thin lip and drew blood. I watched the tiny stream roll down her chin and make a slow silent splatter on the circled gray table. It seemed like she didn’t even notice, that she was oblivious to the pain. A strand of greasy black hair graced her face and she quickly pushed it away.
“Why are you in a white shirt…. huh? Your life so pathetic you want to die? Oh, you sad little prep school girl.” She leaned towards me and rested her thin arms on the table right into the little pool of blood. “They’re going to take your clothes from you so you can’t hang yourself. Or are you so pathetic that you would drown yourself in your toilet? Oh. Poor baby, did life get that hard after I left? Is living with your mommy and daddy in that big house of yours getting too hard? Oh, I know,” she snapped enthusiastically with a hint of excitement in her voice.” Did daddy buy you the wrong color BMW for your birthday? Oh, he must not love you then, right? That’s a good reason for a snob like you to die. Ashley, I’ve always admired you for being such an in-depth person.”
         She let out a loud cackle and her rancid breath made me sick to my stomach. Madison made me sick to my stomach. I felt someone behind me, so I whipped around. It was one of the pod guards. She stood tall, strong, and imposing. Her frizzy blonde hair was plastered to her head and pulled back into a tight ponytail. She was large for a woman, and for the first time since I got here I was afraid. Something about the way she looked at me scared me. I heard Madison laugh again and I realized I was shaking. I pushed my feet hard into my issued slip-on maroon sandals, and I felt the small hole in my sock above my big toe rip open to expose a perfectly manicured toenail that I spent forever doing the morning before. The morning when everything was perfect and I was on top of the world. It was supposed to be my day, my day to break out and I did. But it didn’t end the way I planned; I didn’t end up where I planned.
“What’s your name?” the guard boomed at me after a long awaited silence.
“Ashley.” I managed to quiver it out while still pushing my feet into my sandal enlarging the hole of the white threadbare sock with each breath.
“Don’t play games with me girl!” she yelled back crossing her large arms across her chest. Her loud voice startled me and I jumped back in my plastic gray chair. I stopped pushing my feet and submitted to the shaking that was taking over my body.
“You been here before?”
“No.” I replied quickly. She leaned her body towards the table and smacked her hands loudly on the top. I felt myself shaking even more, and I tried to will myself to stop but it was no use. I was shaking like a leaf, my heart was pounding and I was beginning to loose my breath. She stuck her face right into mine and our noses almost bumped together.
“Anytime you address me from now on it’ll be ma’am. No ma’am, yes ma’am. I ain’t playin’. You ain’t at home no more little girl. I ain’t your momma and I ain’t your daddy or one of your little friends. We don’t play games here, you tryin’ to play games you in the wrong place. From now on you ain’t Ashley no more. As long as your here, you a detainee. Your nothin’, your a worm, just another face, another screwed up kid. What’s your last name?
“Briggs!” I snapped back without catching myself, and I saw the temperature in her face rise. She slammed her hands down again, but harder this time. I pictured the force cracking the table in half or simply diverging itself into a mound of dust. But of course the table just shook, and she pushed her face farther into mine. Her nose mashed against my own, she was so close it looked like she had three eyes. She started screaming at the top of her lungs. She pushed her face even harder against mine and didn’t stop when we were cheek to cheek and I couldn’t even make out her face.
“I’m not playing no games! I an’t yo’ momma! You will not talk to me like that and you will answer me with ma’am! I’m not playing your games Briggs! You hear me, your nothing but manure to me, gum on the bottom of my shoe, and I’d just as soon as stomp you out! I ain’t playin’ with you! Stand up!”
         My ears were ringing so loud, and I was so shocked I couldn’t even think or react in time. Disbelief flooded my mind, and I wanted my mom more than ever to get this disgusting woman out of my face. It wasn’t supposed to be like this! This wasn’t supposed to happen, everything went wrong! I shouldn’t be here; I’m just a kid!
         The guard ripped me up by my arm and smacked my face into the concrete wall next to the table. I felt my front teeth smack into the wall, and then the agonizing rip from my gums. I could taste the blood in my mouth and feel the warmth running down my chin and onto my white shirt, my label. My tongue touched the spot where my two front teeth were supposed to be then I saw them glowing white against the short dark carpet. I knew there was no way I could hold it back, and I started to cry. The moist tears flowed from my eyes and ran down my face to mix with the blood in and around my mouth. The guard spun me around to face her and she had a pure look of disgust, like I was nothing but an annoying wad of gum on the bottom of her shoe.
“Why are you cryin’ huh? This ain’t no place to cry, you got yourself here! You were big enough to do what you did and dumb enough to get locked up! Weren’t you? Weren’t you?”
“Yes.” I grumbled through the pain in my mouth, half choking on the blood pulsing from my tongue. She squeezed my arm tighter and looked me sternly in the eyes.
“What did you say? I know I couldn’t have heard you right. Repeat it Briggs!”
My gut twisted into knots and I wanted to puke all over the floor and let out every feeling that crushed me inside. I wanted to puke until they were all gone, until I couldn’t anymore. I opened my mouth but instead I said, “Yes ma’am.” She threw me back into my chair, and then walked away.
         I could feel Madison’s eyes burning through my skull. I didn’t want to look at her, because I knew the whole thing would start over again. I knew she was smiling and the second I turned to face her she would bring up the past all over again. She felt satisfaction when I was hurt; she relished every moment when I was burning alive inside. I could tell by the evil look in her eyes. Madison thought it was my fault her mom killed herself, that I was the reason she took her life.
         The same guard came back and threw a damp white towel on the table and an ice pack with a few cubes of ice in it. She walked away without saying anything then came back with a red biohazard bag and tossed it on the floor to land by my feet.
“Wipe the blood off your face and use that ice pack; when you’re done put it in the bag and tie it. After chow you’ll clean the blood off the wall, the nurse has your teeth.”
         The guard walked away again with a smirk on her face. I wanted to get up and punch her. I wanted to knock her teeth out and see how she liked it. I hated her with every part of me, and I hated this place with every bit of my strength. I would give anything just go home. I picked up the damp towel and stained it with the blood from my face. Like a murder on a snow bank, the red smears against the cotton white. I was murdered everything was taken from me. I wasn’t Ashley anymore, the girl in eleventh grade with perfect grades. I wasn’t the cheerleader, the beauty my mother called me. I was killed, slain, my insides ripped apart then dangled in front of my face as a sick joke.
I was Briggs, a number, a possession charge, a runaway, a record, a disappointment, and most of all a worm.
         I wrapped the towel around the ice bag and put it against my mouth just as Madison started to speak.
“You hear about my dad?” A flash of pain erupted in her voice; alarmed I turned to look her in the eyes. Her face was blank and emotionless like the dead. Maybe she really was dead, dead inside.
“No.” I stammered as I shifted uncomfterably in my chair,” I haven’t seen you for a couple of years. Since you guys moved after your mom” I stopped myself and looked deep into her eyes. Since her mom died. I haven’t seen her for almost two years, and hadn’t talked to her since the day after it happened. She lived next door, and every day she would come see me. That day didn’t feel any different until I opened the door. It was pouring down rain and she stood on my steps in drenched bloodstained clothes and wet blonde hair plastered to her head. Her tan skin was gleaming with sweat and dripping from the rain. She looked up at me with a look of pure horror on her face. Her eyes were darkened with hate and I could see the anger twitching on her mouth. When I got the door completely open, before I could say anything she lunged at me and knocked me on my back. She kept beating me in the face, and wouldn’t stop even when I started screaming.
She screamed back at me, “You killed her! You killed my mom! It was you! I hate you! I’m going to kill you! I found her, me! God, I hate you! I read the note! It’s your fault she shot herself yours!”
         I could still hear her screams ringing in my ears and I knew looking back if my brother wouldn’t have come home early she probably would have killed me. She looked so different now. Not angry, or sad, but dead.
“He took off and left me not even a month after we moved. He left in the middle of the night. He took all of his stuff, all the food, everything. The only thing he left me in that place called an “apartment” was a note. It said how much the bills were and when they had to be paid. Then at the bottom he wrote: You’re grown enough to look after yourself, it’ll do some good for you, it’s time to grow up. Good luck. Peace, dad.”
I was speechless and stared at her in utter disbelief.
“ I made my money on the streets. I bounced around from places.”
         She flipped over her left arm to scratch it, and what I saw made my heart drop. Madison had a thick jagged purple line across her wrist followed by cigarette burns that went up her entire forearm. She had scattered purple dots all over her major veins and I knew what it was. She caught me staring and flipped her arm back down.
“You know what that is? While you’ve been playing perfect with your sick family, I was trying top survive!” She screamed across the table at me and then the same guard walked over again.
“Peters get in line for chow! What are you deaf?”
Madison got up from her chair and joined the other girls in the line by the main pod door.
“Briggs, you’re eating in here because you don’t know how to act. You’re a freak, and I can’t trust you, stay put!”
         Once again I coward back into my chair. I felt protest rising in my throat, but I choked it down as I ran my cut tongue across the front of my gums where my top front teeth were supposed to be. Hesitantly, I looked behind me at the wall where I knew the blood would be and actually looking at it made the knot in my stomach twist tighter. I would never make it here; I could never make it here. I was already beginning to loose my mind and just got here.

         The guard came back and slapped a styrofoam plate in front of me. At that moment I realized if I was here for a while I would probably starve. There was no way I could eat that, the beef stew drowned the biggest dip in the plate and a withered salad accompanied it on the side. I pushed the plate away from me towards the other side of the table, and commenced to staring at the wall.

         I wondered what my mom was doing, and how she felt about me being here, I wondered if she even cared. Or if my dad did, or if he was even still there. I pictured his face in my mind, the look on it when he told me everything. His green eyes were happy as the darts spilled out of his mouth. Every detail, every image was burned into my mind, even the sound of mom’s sobbing. I had never seen her cry before, and I knew I could never look at her the same again. She had always been my hero unscathed by everything that surrounded her she always triumphed. No matter what the situation she would always be the one to hold me, to comfort me. She was always there to tell me things would go on, move on and this wouldn’t seem so big later on. She didn’t even cry when Madison’s mom died, not even a tear. Or at least not a tear that I saw.
She looked embarrassed standing in the kitchen, exposed like a dirty secret was let out as the moisture flowed from her eyes. I hated her; I hated her so much for being weak, for cowering and most of all not being there for me. She had always been there for me and at the moment I needed her most she was oblivious. It was her fault dad cheated on her, it was her fault she didn’t notice. And it was her fault our family was breaking apart. Madison is wrong! It’s not me that killed her mom it was my mom. It was her fault, she should have noticed when dad was never home. She should have noticed he didn’t love her, she should’ve stopped him! She should’ve stopped me; she shouldn’t have let me leave. She should have looked for me when I took off! I wished she would have barricaded the doorway and ripped my bag from my arms. I wished she had held me down when I screamed I hated her and wiped my tears away. I wished she would have rubbed back my hair, like she used to do and tell me I was beautiful, that I was her baby girl, if only she would have comforted me. But she didn’t.
The march of cadence awoke me from my thoughts and I saw the girls filing in through Charlie Pod door in complete silence. Madison walked right back over to my table and sat down. The different female guard walked up shortly after her and stood by our table. Unlike the other guard she was small, dainty, and more woman like. In a way she actually looked sweet and nice, that is until she opened her mouth.
“Briggs, why didn’t you eat? You anorexic or something?”
“No ma’am,” I replied remembering the episode earlier, I didn’t need another encounter like that today. I couldn’t handle it. “I’m just really stressed out and can’t eat ma’am.”
“Oh, so you’re mocking me Briggs, are you the “big man” now? Are you the one running the show?” The guard who slammed me into the wall earlier came up behind her laughing and beaming her hateful eyes at me. I looked around the pod and all the girls were silent and blank-faced. They knew, they’d been in my place before. What is with these guards?
“Briggs! Don’t look to the other girls for an answer. They don’t want anything to do with you”
“Why you on suicide Briggs? Huh? Why you here?”
         Both guards kept taunting me and it took every bit of strength I had not to fire back. Not to scream. Not to fight. The girls were still motionless, staring.
“Ma’am, the reason why I’m on suicide is not this entire room’s business. It’s confidential, only Social Services needs to know.”
         The guards had surprise written all across their face. I knew they weren’t expecting that, and they didn’t know what to say. I was cheering in my head I won! Ha! There is a way around all of this and…..
         The large guard lunged at me and smacked my face in the beef stew. She held me down and I felt my throat constricting, my heart beating faster. I couldn’t breath! I tried to scream and fight back. I threw my arms into the air reaching for something, anything to get me out of this. I found the woman’s greasy ponytail and pulled it as hard as I could. She released her grip from the back of my head and I was free. She threw me to the ground. I could barely see anything with the gravy in my eyes, but I heard the booming voice of the guard call a duress in Charlie pod into the walkie talkie. Immediately I heard the other staff running down the hall toward the pod. My heart raced faster, I didn’t know what was going to happen. What’s a duress? What did I do? She tried to drown me in my beef stew. I didn’t do anything!
         When I wiped the gravy out of my eyes, they burned they like were on fire. My vision was still blotchy but I could make out the silhouette of a guard standing above me with a black can in their hands. I heard the steady hiss of the can and felt the fire in my eyes, and then I felt like I couldn’t breath. I opened my eyes and tried to see but I couldn’t see anything, and I felt like my face was on fire. I kept throwing my arms around and screaming. It felt like someone lit my face on fire and poured magma into my throat. I felt hands grabbing my arms and my legs then I was being carried out of the pod. Before I knew it I was in the intake bathroom. The guards ripped my uniform clothes off and threw me into the shower. A voice that I did not recognize told me to hold my eyes open and look at the water. I did, and it felt like the water just made the burning worse. Then the water cut from cold to scolding hot. I screamed louder than I knew I’d ever screamed in my life, I felt like the skin on my face was ripped off leaving my bare flesh exposed. I felt an arm pull me out of the shower and wrap a towel around my body. I was being carried out again. They took me into the nurse’s station; I could hear the dainty voice of the nurse looking for an explanation. I was thrown into another shower and the door closed behind me. I could hear the guard’s footsteps in the room and one screaming at me to hurry up. The cold water was savior to my burning senses. I let out a sigh of relief and opened my eyes to let the cold water clean them out, until I could see again.
The door opened again and the nurse’s dainty voice lingered behind me and I felt her fingers massaging my scalp and rinsing out my hair. I started to feel like I could breath again.
         The large guard pulled me out of the shower and threw clean clothes at me. She screamed at me to get dressed, I did as fast as I could. As soon as my second sock was on they pulled me out the door and into intake. I was silent. Even though all the spray was washed off I could still feel it lingering in my eyes and across my face. They held me by my arms and led me back down to pod. Everyone was locked down and in their cells. Again I was thrown down into a chair. The two pod guards started arguing about what cell they were going to put me in. Then I heard it: bunk with Peters. I wanted to get up and slap the guard in the face. Was she out of her mind? Everything and now this? I was so enraged I thought if I ran hard enough and fast enough I could bust through the cement wall and I would be free. Then with all my adrenaline I could climb the humungous wall outside of the cement wall and I would be gone. I would never have to see Madison’s face again or that big burly guard that was secretly a man. There was no way any woman looked like that. That was about as realistic as making a helicopter out of a rubber band and a toothpick. Depression flooded over me as my dream of escape disintegrated away. Then the dainty guard led me to the cell where Madison was. She called down to control with the walkie-talkie to open the cell door Charlie Echo seven.
         Madison was sitting on her green mattress on the concrete slab and staring at the wall. She looked over at my quickly and scowled then a sinister smile crept onto her face. I sat on the hard floor and stared right into her brown eyes.
“Why do you hate me? Huh? What did I ever do to you? I didn’t kill your mom you’re crazy. I don’t even belong here, it’s people like you that do.”
She laughed aloud exposing her yellow teeth and the orange buildup on them. She pulled the rubber band out of her ratty uncombed brown hair and set it next to her on her mat. She looked nothing like what she used to, beautiful and strong. She looked like a crazy bum with her hair sticking up in different directions all around her head.
“It’s people like me that belong here? People like me, so why are you here? Because obviously you’re nothing like me. I’m homeless, parentless and you have it all.  Everything you could ever dream of, that’s what makes us so different. You make me sick.”
“No! I don’t have it all. You want to know why I’m in here? You really want to know. Okay the day before yesterday my dad called a family meeting, to tell my mom he was leaving her for a student that he teaches in one of his college classes and that he has cheated on her before. Actually he’s been cheating on her the entire time they’ve been together. And, after two years he told my mom the entire time you guys lived next door he was sleeping with your whore of a mom.”
         Ashley looked happy and pleased. Part of me expected her to jump out and beat my face into the wall, but she just sat there relishing every second of my anger complete and was completely calm.
“Then she killed herself because he wouldn’t leave mom for her like he said he would. But he’s sure leaving her for somebody now! So I took off and stayed at a friend’s house, and so on. We had a party and things got kind of crazy. The last thing I remember was doing a couple lines, then I woke up to a cop shaking me and I was in the middle of  central park. He realized I was a runaway then took me here. When they searched me they found the rest of the coke from last night in my pocket and a quarter of weed. So now I’m here.”
         She stared at me in silence and her happy eyes got sad. It felt like it was old times again, when we were fourteen and we would talk for hours in her room with her night light on. We were supposed to be in bed but we could never sleep. We talked in softened whispers about everything. But most of all about how we were going to spend the rest of high school together and our future plans to get an apartment to live together. Our friends would be friends. I pictured Madison’s old innocent face over her new scarred pale complexion. That was not the Madison I knew. The one I knew slept with a nightlight on freshman year because she was afraid of the dark. The one I knew had dreams and lots of them. This Madison was a stranger. I wanted to go back to the old times, to stop everything from happening and tearing everything in our lives apart. Even if I couldn’t do that I wished to God I could’ve have made it so Madison didn’t find her mom. Thinking of her walking into that dark room to find her mom laying on the floor and her head in a pool of blood made my skin crawl. I couldn’t imagine being her.
“So.. um when are you going to court Ash.”
         She hadn’t called me Ash since we were younger, and it made me cry. Maybe Madison really was still her, maybe I just had to wake her from the dead.
“I have it tomorrow, do you think he’ll let me go?”
“Ash, he’s not going to let you go.”
“You mean he’s going to make me stay here? In this place? I won’t make it M. Those guards have it out for me, I swear to God they do. I can’t do it M.”
         I felt a knot rising in my throat, and I felt like I was going to choke. I wanted to grab Madison and pull her close. I wanted to tell her I was sorry about everything, and I would change it if I could. I wanted to tell her that I knew how she felt. Maybe it wasn’t her exact situation but still I was loosing my family. I knew why she had that line on her wrist, I knew why she was so desperate. I knew why she burned herself with cigarettes, I knew because of the purple circles on my thighs. I wanted to reach out to her, but I could tell by her face she was no longer an embracing kind of person.
“It’s not my problem , and I really don’t care. Your stupid, grow up!”
         The hate flashed back across her face and my brief moment with M was gone. She was the Madison in front of me who didn’t believe in dreams but lived in a world of nightmares.
“Madison why are you here? What did you do? I told you mine.”
“Murder. “That woman that was on the news reported missing then, dead. You might have heard about it. I stabbed her.”
The one word, murder, shot right into my gut and ripped me apart. She said it proudly like she was a hero, and I hated her. I heard about it on the news, the woman was robbed and stabbed to death. She had three kids and was working a couple jobs; she was on her way home when she was attacked. Madison was really gone there was no way of shaking her out of this nightmare. Madison was dead.
“I have court tomorrow and I’m probably going to go to prison. But it’s nothing, that woman deserved it.”
         I couldn’t look at her anymore, I hated her, and she disgusted me. I climbed up the short metal ladder to my matt on my slab and lay down. I felt my body shaking and the sobs rising in my throat. Pictures flashed into my mind from my life like a movie. Everything goes by so fast. This life is here one minute and gone. Why are we even alive to watch the people around us we love suffer. Life is a sick joke, and we’re all part of it. I wanted to scream at God. I wanted to know why all of this stuff had to happen to us. Why did he destroy the people I loved and let them deteriorate in front of me.
I wanted to run as fast as I could as far away as my legs could possibly take me. I wanted to fly away past the concrete walls, past the clouds, and deep into the sky. I wanted to fly to where no one could hurt me, no one I loved got hurt. Where everything was perfect. But I knew I was going nowhere, I wasn’t even going to go home. I was trapped in my jail cell, in a living hell on the bridge of Insanity.