***My Short Story: "The Lunatic Girl," Part 2...

It was Cranwell Lunatic Asylum I spied in the distance. Now, the horses leading the carriage in which I was imprisoned trotted briskly on a very long lane, their hooves clop-clopping the dark brown frozen ground. The carriage stopped in front of the building's imposing entrance, and the driver yanked the carriage door. The burly footman clumsily and roughly jostled me out, bound hand and foot and gagged, as I was, useless, so vainly struggling, as he half-carried me inside Cranwell. Immediately, two huge orderlies, a man and a woman came forth to silently take me from the footman, who then turned and left. I looked into the cold eyes of my attendants. They seemed angry, as if I was just another unavoidable bother they could hardly endure. The woman bent, untying my ankles. I could walk. One on either side of me, they hustled me down the corridor. We stopped at a tall and long desk made of scuffed and pitted wood. Behind it was a sour-looking man, no beauty, who reminded me of a human rat. He had small pale gray eyes and a mustache with, perhaps, three hundred stiff, wiry hairs in it, like a rat's long whiskers. He had a long nose like a shriveled parsnip and a stringy neck. Tufts of dark gray hair sprouted from the top and sides of his head. His ears were large, pinkish and translucent; they stuck out like a rodent's. He wore a wrinkled shirt and a black string tie; a threadbare and shiny black suit hung on his emaciated frame. The man nodded and my gag was removed. I sputtered,"I don't belong here! My, --- my father, Baron Edmund Addington, he forced me to!... I was kidnapped, forced into a carriage!..." The man held up his palm. "Quiet. You will be silent and reasonable or we shall be gagging you again. We strive for peace here. This is a place of healing and understanding, and you will you treated with kindness, but only if you cooperate." He fixed me with intense, squinting eyes. "If you insist on behaving in an irrational manner you will be dealt with firmly." I shut my mouth, truly frightened. Of course, I had heard the gossip that zooms around the homes of the gentry, as we were, as my people had been for generations. The aristrocracy very seldom has the priviledge of marrying for love. So, "unruly" wives of arranged marriages and, --- any female relations who step out of their accustomed roles in high society, are in danger of being "put away' for their safety and sanity, --- of course... It was a very wicked thing to do to family members of the "fair sex," but it happened all the time. Now, it was happening to me! The man, who I later learned was Ira Carbontle, brought a big book from under the desk, setting it on the surface. He opened the book, ran a long, bony finger with thick nails that were badly in need of trimming over names and entrys, until he came to one. "Ah, yes," he said, "are you Lucille Cecelia Addington?" "I told you my father is Baron Edmund Addington, so, --- yes, I am his daughter Lucille, naturally! And, it is Baroness Lucille Addington!" "Here you are simply Lucille Addington and you will mind." "Mind!" "Yes, mind. If you don't..." "Are you threatening me?" His voice was annoyingly patronizing. "You have been brought here for a reason, Lucille. You are mentally and emotionally disturbed. Your father has told us of your condition. You will be evaluated, and examined for further abnormalities. Your father has sorrowfully told us that he believes you have slipped into insanity, that you are suffering from female hysteria brought on by an overwhelming and uncontrolled surge of feminine humors, which has led to a pregnancy. So sad in such a young and unwed woman..." I gritted my teeth. "I am not insane!" Ira closed the book, placed it back under the desk. He folded his hands on the desk's surface, looked at me with false compassion. "You are." He nodded to the orderlies, who still held my upper arms. They hustled me dowm the long corridor. We went through two swinging doors. Upon entering this part of the corridor we were greeted with what I would call an explosion of noise, --- all from shrieking human voices. The cacophony came from people lining or huddled against walls constructed mostly of very thick panes of glass in front of iron bars. Some people sat in chairs too, or on benches. Others crouched on the floor like wild beasts, waiting to pounce. Many sat with their knees drawn up, their faced buried against their thighs. Some paced back and forth, back and forth, back and forth. Some stared ahead, their eyes lifeless. Some jerked and trembled, with rolling eyes, like frightened and pathetic sheep.

One woman seemed to have her left eye going in the opposite dirextion from her right.

We walked on, turned a corner, went through another set of double doors. We were in a long room lined with narrow metal beds, made up neatly with white sheets. Next to one bed stood women and men, and a man in a white coat, all most certainly extra medical personnel and a doctor, plus two men in black suits, one man wearing a stovepipe hat. This man's clothes were very shabby, even dusty. He had thick black brows, a scraggly black beard and was frowning, as if he had an extremely distasteful job to do. The doctor looked strangely interested, even happy. On the bed next to them was a figure covered with a sheet; a white towel covered the figure's face.

"Unbind her," the man in the stovepipe hat said, "but, can't you fools see how busy we are?" --- Copyright 2023, by Antoinette Beard.