Member-only story
The Authentic Eclectic
The Leap I Had To Take
From the frying pan into the fire — or freedom
The dead are not the demons here
The sun hasn’t begun to wink through the window of my tiny room in the 65-year-old hospital building. There’s room for a bed and a dresser and nothing else. The building hasn’t changed much despite its reincarnation. It still looks and acts like a hospital in all the important ways — it promises new life but hides behind its back that it’s really where hopes, dreams, and freedom die.
Lost souls haunt the halls. Listen closely, and you’ll hear babies born decades ago crying their first cries. Poltergeists slam doors. In the six years I’ve lived here, I barely even hear them any more.
The dead are not the demons here.
It’s a late summer day in 1995. Today’s the day I leap out of the fishbowl.
I have no plan, except that by the time the sun comes up I’ll be miles away, somewhere, anywhere but here. It’s today because if I wait one more day they are going to either put me under guard or start interrogating me about my crimes, meaning people I recruited who turned out “unqualified.” People who ran away like I am now. They say I’m responsible. I’m a criminal because I recruited defective…
