Ascending From Madness Read online

  He turned when he got inside, his hand on the door handle. His gaze latched on mine, his lips rolling together. He looked like he wanted to say something, but at the sound of his son’s voice calling him, he turned away from me and shut the door.

  I swallowed back the lump in my throat, swiveling back to face the yard. What the fuck was wrong with me? Guzzling down the rest of whiskey, I tried to understand why his leaving made me feel so alone. I had just met him a few hours ago.

  Leave it to you, Alice, to crush on a married man.

  I felt gutted. Lost. As if whatever I had been searching for, I finally found, then lost it again.

  Chapter 2

  Milk rolled through the dark liquid, twisting and churning with murky swirls. Entranced by the courtship between coffee and milk before they gave in to the meeting and fused together, I stared at my cup like it would reveal the images and impressions my mind had been filled with all night.

  Mentally and physically tired, I had hoped for a soundless sleep. That was not what I got. Every time I closed my eyes, it felt as if I were falling down a dark hole, paralyzed, and where figures danced just outside my view. All I felt was terror that I was too late. That I had to get somewhere. Save someone. Lives were in my hands, but I was stuck. The darkness itself was pinning me down, locking up my muscles.

  Three times I bolted awake, fighting with my covers, my heart beating, fear lining my forehead with sweat. Finally, I gave up around dawn, stumbling downstairs for coffee before I went back to my sketches. The lure back to them, to keep inventing, was stronger than anything I had ever felt. The muse had surfaced and was singing like a siren, calling me back to my designs.

  “Alice?” My mom’s shocked voice popped my head up. She looked beautiful; her silky hair brushed her shoulders. She wore a knee-length plaid skirt, long-sleeve blue blouse, stockings, and ballet flats. At fifty-two, besides a few gray hairs and laugh lines, my mother really could be mistaken for my older sister. “What are you doing up so early? I usually have to drag you out of your bed at noon.”

  Complete exaggeration. Maybe ten years ago when I was in high school, but my job in the city had me at the office at eight a.m. She seemed to only recall me at fifteen, not twenty-five and forgot I lived on my own, took care of myself.

  “Couldn’t sleep.” I shrugged, taking a sip of coffee, watching my mom retrieve her own mug of caffeine. “Why are you up? You don’t work Sundays.”

  “No, I don’t. But oddly, Rose called me this morning saying she was sick.” Mom’s eyebrows clicked up.

  “You mean the Rose who was here last night, dancing on our sofa, a table decoration on her head, doing shots of Dad’s holiday punch while singing a Run-DMC Christmas rap?”

  “That would be the one,” Mom smirked. “Somewhere from here to her apartment, she swears she got the flu.”

  “Too much of Dad’s punch is now code for flu,” I snorted.

  Mom chuckled, swiping a banana out of the fruit bowl. “How are you feeling?”

  “Fine,” I lied. Nothing felt fine. My nightmares weren’t the only thing keeping me up. Thoughts of Matt Hatter had me tossing and turning, reprimanding myself for every thought, clean or dirty, I had of him.

  “You had us all worried last night. And then you disappeared.”

  Inhaling more caffeine stopped me from responding.

  “Alice.”

  “Mom.”

  “Just know I am really concerned. You have not been yourself.”

  “I was off a day. Getting over some bug.”

  “No, it’s been longer than a day. It’s been going on for a while now.”

  A while? Really?

  My head tried to file back to the last weeks when I had returned home after losing my job. It felt like running through mud, my mind struggling to remember the block of nothing before it skipped into the weeks prior. Hazy and distant, I did recall coming home. Granted I was a little depressed, but I had just lost my job and supposed boyfriend, having to move back home at twenty-five. That would demoralize anyone.

  Mom poured coffee into a travel mug, adding a flavoring from a bottle I didn’t recognize, observing me through her lashes. “So… what are your plans today? Did you see those catalogs I put in your bag?”

  “You mean the dozens of college brochures? Yeah, kind of hard to miss.” I went back to drinking my coffee.

  “Sweetheart, you need a focus. You need a degree if you want to have a chance to advance. Do you think they would have chosen that guy over you if you had a degree?”

  I had been let go from the job before my last assistant job with my ex. The boss’s nephew was hired instead, who knew nothing about the company.

  “Yes.” I set the cup down with a clink. “And even without a degree, he had two things I didn’t… a blood relation and a dick.”

  “Alice.” Mom frowned.

  “I was the best fit, knew everything about King of Hearts Cookies.” I worked in customer service for three years, where I realized quickly I didn’t really like people and was hoping to get the job in their marketing department. I actually hated it there and felt working in corporate sucked out my soul, but it would have been amazing money. The job went to Bill, the lizard. No joke. He looked like a lizard, constantly flicking his tongue.

  “Well, please take a moment to look at them again. I’ll be back around six.” She kissed my forehead. “Oh, and you should try the homemade creamer Jessica brought over last night. I swear I could drink it in everything. It’s so divine.” She grabbed her purse and went out the garage door.

  My eyebrows pinched at her choice of description, but I glared at the label-less bottle on the counter. I wouldn’t be touching anything that woman made. Plus, Jessica didn’t look like someone who did “homemade” anything, and I was sure she didn’t bake, cook, or even know where the kitchen was. She probably bought generic syrup from the store down the street and put it in another bottle.

  Pushing off the stool, I went to stand up and out of my peripheral saw a large, child-size, blurry white object hop across the lawn. My neck snapped to the glass, my gaze searching for what I saw.

  Nothing. Our fenced backyard was empty of anything but a few trees and a lawn covered with snow. We got little critters, especially bunnies in the spring, but this seemed far larger than any bunny we had in these parts. We didn’t grow toddler-sized rabbits here, and our cottontails were brownish, not pure white.

  “I need to get some sleep.” I shook my head, turned away from the slider, and headed back upstairs. I was tempted to go back to bed, but my ass plunked down at my desk chair, my fingers picking up my pencil, like I had no choice in the matter.

  My hand flew over the page, tendrils of my dreams jumping up and down on the back of my neck, controlling my arm.

  I started to draw.

  And I didn’t stop.

  “Alice?” I heard my name, but it sounded more like a faint wind licking at tree leaves. “Oh my god!”

  A figure crashed down next to me at my desk, grabbing my arm.

  “Alice. Stop!”

  “Din-ah. Let go,” I snarled as my sister’s hand tugged at the charcoal stub in my hand.

  “You let go,” she snapped, ripping it from my hand, twisting my head to hers. Her brown eyes were wide and full of alarm. She was dressed in her elf costume. My attention went over her shoulder to the night filling my bay window instead of morning light. What the hell? How was it night already?

  “What is wrong with you?” She waved at my hands.

  My gaze slowly slid to my hands and the sketchpad on the desk. Covered in blood. Red liquid pooled and smudged across the sheets, coloring in the scarves around the countless top hats I continued to sketch over and over, like I was using my blood as a coloring crayon. Feeling like I just woke up from a deep sleep, I blinked at my raw and cut fingers smeared with charcoal and blood.

  “Did you do this to yourself?” Her voice went up as she went back up onto her feet, snatching up my X-Acto knife I us
ed to cut patterns, the blade caked with drying blood. “Holy shit, Alice. You sliced yourself?”

  I blinked up at her. The alarm in her tone and the speed of her movements confounded my thoughts. I couldn’t remember cutting myself, but the wounds over my hands, going down to my wrist, suggested otherwise.

  “I don’t know.” I held up my hands, trying to recall any pain when I had done it. All I remembered was sitting down in the early morning. Now it was nighttime again.

  “You. Don’t. Know?” She emphasized each word, her hands on her hips. Puffed up in the skimpy green-and-red costume with red-and-white-striped legs and curved boots on her feet, her cheeks were scarlet.

  “You are one very pissed-off elf.” A bubblelike chuckle fizzled up my throat.

  “This is not funny.” She grasped my shoulders. “Have you even left this chair today? Do you remember me saying goodbye to you? Eight hours ago?”

  No. I didn’t recall.

  Her head snapped back to the drawings, really taking them in. “God, Alice… you used your blood to color in the scarves?” She touched the top page, flipping through the hundreds of sheets I had already drawn on. Her attention fell to the floor. There were dozens of sheets ripped out, carpeting my rug in layers. “What the…” She pinched her lips together. “They are all the same. Every single one. And dozens on a single page.”

  She picked up another sketchpad that was pushed to the other side of the desk. This one was full as well. Mostly of top hats with a few penguin heads and rabbit ears.

  She slammed the pad closed and stared at me like I was some extraterrestrial. Her mouth parted, her eyes darting over me.

  “Dad! Mom!” she yelled.

  “Dinah.” I stood, reaching for her. “Don’t.”

  Batting away my hands, she screamed louder for them.

  “What, Dinah?” Dad pushed open my door wider, Mom following behind him. “What’s wrong?”

  “Look!” She motioned to me, then at the room, picking up the nearest notebook, flicking through the pages. “Thousands of them. The same damn thing.” She tossed the book down, picking up the X-Acto knife.

  “Dinah,” I pleaded.

  She glared at me, fixating on our parents.

  “She used her own blood to color in the designs.” She waved the blade around, pointing at me. “Look at her hands.”

  Mom pushed past Dad, her mouth dropping as her gaze zeroed in on the wounds.

  “Fudge…” She swept up my hands in horror. Yes, my mother was one of those who said fudge instead of fuck. “Alice?” Her eyes met mine. “Did you really do this to yourself?”

  Did I? I didn’t remember. But I felt it would be worse to say that than admitting it.

  “Yes,” I whispered.

  “But why? Tell me! Why would you do this?” Fear and confusion peaked her voice, making it identical to Dinah’s.

  My dad sensed Mom was a step away from losing her mind. Pushing in, he took my hands from her. “Alice. Talk to us. Why would you cut yourself?”

  “I ran out of red?” I shrugged one shoulder.

  There are many times I wish I could take back what my mouth slipped out. This would probably be one of those times. Even my dad closed his eyes, bowing his head, knowing what would come from my response.

  “WHAT? WHAT?” My mother screeched, starting to circle like a frantic bird around a nest, pecking at my drawings, my blood stirring a frenzy in her. I never really noticed until now, but in a “crisis” she couldn’t control, my mom totally lost it. Dad was the calm one.

  “Is she serious, Lewis?” She talked to my father like I wasn’t there. “I can’t believe our baby is cutting herself.”

  “No, I’m not, Mom.”

  “Really?” She motioned to my injuries. “What are those then?”

  “Creative liberty?” My dad glowered at my response. “Look at Van Gogh.”

  “Not helping,” he muttered, shaking his head. “Carroll, calm down.”

  “Calm down? You want me to relax?”

  “Yes.” He nodded. “You flying off the handle will not help the situation.”

  Mom shut her eyes, taking in a deep breath, blowing out, a few times. We all stayed silent as she reclaimed her self-control.

  When she opened her eyes, she was organized and in command.

  “Sit down, Alice.”

  I bit back the groan in my chest. I was about to be lectured. At twenty-five you really hoped those would be over with.

  “Alice…” Dad said softly, beseeching me to do sit without a fight. “Dinah, please leave us alone with your sister.”

  “What? Why?”

  “Because.” He eyed her. “I said so.”

  She rolled her eyes, stomping from the room in a huff, her bell shoes tinkling, making it hard to take her anger seriously.

  Flopping down on the bed, I waited for the censure to begin .

  “Can you not see how upsetting this is?” Mom started, her voice controlled but not yet composed. “So please, tell us. Why did you decide to slice into your skin? Use your blood to color?”

  My mouth pinched together. It was hard to defend something you couldn’t recall. I should have been freaking out about that aspect, but strangely I felt relaxed, for the first time since I woke up the other morning.

  “Mom, I wasn’t trying to hurt myself or anything like that.”

  “That did not answer the question.” Leave it to my dad to know when someone was trying to avoid answering directly.

  “I don’t know.”

  “I don’t understand how you don’t know.” Mom licked her lips, taking even breaths. “At one point you picked up the blade and decided to cut into your skin. What made you decide that?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “We are going to need a better answer than that, young lady.” Dad folded his arms.

  “I can’t give you one.”

  “Why?”

  “Because I don’t… I don’t reme—” I snapped my mouth closed. My gut screeched at me to shut up, having no memory of the situation would only scare them more.

  “Yes?” Dad lifted his eyebrow.

  “Look. I’m sorry I scared you. I was just caught up with my designs. I wasn’t trying to hurt myself. Really.”

  “That’s another thing.” Mom picked up one from the floor. “For two days now, you’ve been sketching the same thing for hours and hours, like you’re possessed. You don’t hear us when we come in. I called you three times for dinner tonight. You probably wouldn’t have stopped until one of us made you.”

  “I’m really inspired right now.”

  “Inspired?” Mom scoffed. “I am not taking away your talent, Alice. But they are just top hats, with a red scarf. To see you draw them over and over is really disturbing.” She sighed, setting the paper on my desk. “I know what you went through with the breakup and losing your job. It must be difficult. But this level of depression is beyond the normal dejection.”

  “Normal?” I sputtered. “Normal could be abnormal, and abnormal could be quite ordinary to some.”

  Where the hell did that come from?

  Both my parents blinked at me.

  “I think it might be best if you speak to someone.”

  “What do you mean? A therapist?”

  “Yes.” Mom nodded. “Actually, I had been thinking it for some time now, but after last night and speaking with Jessica—”

  “Jessica?” My spine bolted up in a rigid line. “What does she have to do with this?”

  “We talked a lot last night. I can’t tell you how wonderful it was to get to know her. She’s such an amazing lady.” There was no denying the reverence in my mother’s voice. “She really made me see. We talked a lot about you. About your issues.”

  “About me?” Indignation hoisted me up to my feet. “What did she make you see? And why are you talking to a lady you just met a minute ago about me anyway?” My mom was someone who had people in awe of her, not the other way around. Nor did she ever talk
to strangers about family problems. She barely talked to us about them. And now she was spewing them to the one person I hated.

  I didn’t understand my loathing any more than I understood my mom’s esteem of her. Neither of us knew her well enough to feel either way, but thinking about the woman, I wanted to beat the crap out of her.

  “She thinks you should talk to someone.”

  “I don’t care what she thinks.”

  “Alice.” Dad used his warning tone. “We only want what is best for you.”

  “I’m fine!” I tossed up my arms. “Today was a fluke. I promise I will be back to myself tomorrow. I’ll even look at those college pamphlets.” Sometimes you had to pull out the big guns. And college was one of those for my parents.

  Several painful minutes passed before Mom nodded. “Fine. But you’re coming to work with me. I know you don’t have a shift at Santa’s Cottage. The library is a good, quiet place you can read through the catalogs or use the computer.”

  “I could do it at home.”

  “No. You are coming with me. End of discussion.” Mom shook her head.

  She didn’t want me left alone. She needed a place she could watch me and keep me away from sketching and X-Acto knives. I wouldn’t be spending the day with my mother or even the librarian. I would be spending it with a warden.

  Chapter 3

  Streetlights illuminated the sidewalk, shadowing the row of darkened homes along the road. The late hour had everyone tucked in their beds fast asleep. An icy breeze coaxed me farther into my jacket, my nose sniffling every few seconds. Pulling down my beanie, I strolled forward with no destination. Again, I didn’t care how cold it was, it was worth the numb skin to get out of my claustrophobic house. Away from vigilant eyes and judgment.

  Even asleep, I swear I could feel my family’s condemnation seeping under the door, pressing down on my body.

  The more logical part of my brain suggested I should be terrified as well. I couldn’t remember drawing all those sketches or cutting myself. At all. But in my gut I knew I wasn’t trying to harm myself. I wasn’t someone cutting herself to feel something or as a cry for help.