Part 1: Twisted

I shook violently until finally I was released from the terrible captivity that kept me. My stomach churned as I flicked on my lamp and ran to the bathroom. Acid burned my throat and a foul taste lingered on my tongue. My lids sliced my eyes as they fluttered endlessly, attemtping to remove the glass-shattering images from my tangle of thoughts. I stumbled back and fell to the rock floor. The stitched scars on my left wrist begged for attention. I looked for my pocket-knife for hours before I remembered the chubby nurse entering my room and stealing it from me. Thought stole me and I slipped into a spinning day-dream. A sharp pain shoved me from my elysian wonderland. Shock overthrew me as I tasted my own blood and realized what I had done. My disgusted screams lead the nurses to my cobblestone hell-hole.
'Dear Mr. Kanlen,
I regret to inform you of your daughter's current condition. She has recently been deprived of her small camping blade due to suicide attempts and has now been relocated to the new ward in which patients are constantly under surveillance. We've closed the wound on her wrist and put a brace around it. Unless the brace is taken off her teeth cannot reach her wrist. We will let you know of further information as is fit.
You're Truly,
Dr. Mathers.
Mr. Kanlen read the letter over and over before finally flopping down onto the black, leather recliner in his corner office. A large mahogany desk gleamed in the centre of the room. Chrome framed pictures cluttered the walls and the small coffee table, but his desk was completely empty, excluding the large computer monitor on the left corner. He picked up a large photo from the coffee table and stared at it. He looked at the family, two loving parents with dark hair and bright eyes. A young boy smiled at his younger sister. They shared turquoise eyes, a perfect nose and a gleaming smile. The girl looked lovingly up at her father. Such joy in that simple freeze-frame of a moment. Where had this family disappeared?

There was a knock at my door. Or maybe I was hitting something… Without warning the door opened and the chubby nurse came in with a chair that had big bicycle wheels near the bottom.
“What is that for… who said that?”
“Kate that was you.” The Nurse began all too nicely. “This is a wheelchair, and I’m taking you to a different room. Is that all right?”
My head started throbbing as the little fat nurse helped me off the floor and upright into the chair.
“I want my knife back. Kendra wants to see it.”
“Who’s Kendra?” The nurse slurred in her thick southern drawl.
“Duh! The girl in the room beside me.” I said flatly. “She waves to me and talks to me every day.” My voice portrayed obvious accusation.
“Which window?” The nurse asked trying to hide her obvious frustration.
“The window right there!” My voice cracked between each word as it rolled uncomfortably off the tip of my parched tongue. “Who are you?” The words seemed to have slipped out of my ears rather than waiting to come out of my mouth.
“My name is Harriet.” She said and began to wheel the strange chair down the pastel hallways. I coarsely hummed to myself. What was the name of the song…everything inside my head was blurry. Like trying to look at a picture through heat waves. The knots in my head tightened and I snapped into reality. My heart pulsed and hammered pain into my head.
“Here we are.” Harriet screeched in her singsong shrill voice as she took a sharp right between a crooked lavender doorframe.
“This is where you’re parking it for a while hunney.” Harriet helped me out of my chair and onto a small bed in the corner of the room. The stone floor felt chilly beneath my feet. A small black camera stalked me and followed my every move. What kind of sickos are they? I thought. There was no possible way to reach the camera so I sat directly underneath it. Ha, I said to myself. Can’t see me here. I smirked and looked at the big window in the wall.
“well,” I sighed. “At least Kendra won’t be able to copy me twenty-four seven.” I got up to see who my new neighbour was. I stared through the window dumbfounded. There stood Kendra. Copying me AGAIN! Her room was exactly the same as mine…except backwards. We waved at each other at exactly the same time. She seemed to be my soul mate. We were exactly the same.
After countless tie-game staring contests between Kendra and I, there was a knock at my door.
“Go ahead, just come right in.” I remarked sarcastically after a man with a big trolley of paper cups shuffled passed the steel guardian. “Kate Kanlen,” he muttered, looking through a large stack of files. “This is some pretty strong stuff. What did you do to yourself kid?” I ignored the rhetorical question and sneered at the pixie cup he handed me. Neon capsules flooded the paper cup’s bottom. He also gave me a paper cup filled with water. “Drink up, sugar. I can’t leave until those are gone.” I forced the pills into the back of my throat and lodged them there before opening my mouth to ‘prove’ I took the drugs. He nodded and pulled the trolley through hell’s gates and back into the real world. I shoved my finger down my throat to unblock my airway as soon as the door slammed behind him. Kendra gaped at me through the window and then looked at the camera.
I choked out the pills and shoved them hastily into my bra before realizing what Kendra was looking at.
"Well they probly won't see that 'cause I mean....I" I sputtered and paused and eventually the trail of words streaming from my mouth dropped to a grain of sand swirling aimlessly in the ocean's tides.
Just then my mind's eye lead me in a different direction, away from my room, away from the cameras, away from Kendra. I was in the ocean's tides swirling aimlessly. I sank to the silky sand and watched the seaweed bow to their underwater god Current. Slowly, my body began drifting towards a waterlogged hurricaine. It swept up sand, rocks, small fish, everything in sight. Twirling underwater, I only then came to realize I had no breath. Panic blanketed my thoughts and then blackness....
"He is the safest person in the world. Why do you do this to me? I'm trying to get you help and what do you do, throw my ideas into hell." The low voice penetrated through my skull and pulled forth a migrane.
"Daddy please..." I moaned. My eyes jerked open as I grasped onto my surroundings, realizing I was the only one in the room. Kendra's room seemed to be void of movement as well. The skylight in the left corner of the cieling shone blackness into the gloomy space. The shadows examined me carefully and swayed back and forth, taunting me with their freedom.
* * *
Through the windowless swinging door marked Restricted stood Kate's future, he thought. Mr. Kanlen wove through the various patients, nurses and doctors in the large bland hallway. His eyes remained steady on his target, not quivering, nor shifting, simply staring straight into the eyes of the beholder. He pushed swiftly though the door, as if years of experience flooded through his memory. Pulling a white lab coat over his shoulders he headed to the filing cabinet marked "Confidential". A young woman hovered over the cabinet, flipping through various colour-coded folders. He eased around her and looked over her shoulder for his daughter's file. After minutes of searching, satisfied he wouldn't learn her future after all, he began to turn. Just then the young woman put a file back. Kate's future, a heartbeat away, yet a lifetime stood between Mr. Kanlen and the file. With a charming smile he faced the woman warmly. "Could I snag that file from you Ma'am?" he asked calmly. Deep inside he hoped she wouldn't recognize the name embroidered on the breast of the lab coat.
"Dr. Graham!" she exclaimed. "Of course." She fumbled, as if her ability to speak had abandoned her. Mr. Kanlen grasped the file and headed to a small white table in the centre of the large room. The small chair screeched across the linoleum as he pulled it from the table and sat down. He spread the contents of the file out on the table before him and sat, in disbelief and read the information.
Patient: Kate Kanlen
Date Of Birth: 05/09/89
Age: 14
Hair Colour: Blonde
Eye Colour: Blue
Condition: Critical
Family Members: Father; Mr. Rick Kanlen.
Medical Number: 188-298-1695
Medication: N/A [Confidential]
Reason for Hospitalization: Still Being Received
Rick closed the file sharply and stood up so fast his chair teetered and tipped back, embracing the cold floor. In the neatest manner he could, he threw the file back into the cabinet, slammed it shut and hurried passed the staring doctors out the windowless swinging door marked Restricted. The lab coat flung off his shoulders, discarded into a dark corner with lonely dust bunnies. He burst threw the doors and slid helplessly into the black leather interrior of his Mercedes.
"There is nothing wrong with her!" He screamed.
Kendra and I started humming the same song at the exact same time.
"Don't you have a life Kendra? All you do is look at me, focus on me. The only time you are awake is when I am. You just won't leave me alone."
She stood there, tears streaming as I swatted at the tears on my own face. Just then the floor started spinning under my feet, everything was moving, but I stayed still. I laid down on the rotating floor and sank deeper and deeper into the cobblestone.