6I wish Denzil was here with me now. They've attached a leather leash around my neck for some unknown reason, it's not like I'm going to run away or anything. Could I? Could I kick the lardy nurse in the shin, bite her hand and snatch away the leash and run past her? I'm a skinny girl, built like a rake; I could squeeze through the iron gates. All four of them. I used sneak into the orchard by my house with Denzil, I know a vault able fence when I see one. Could I do all that?
Nah.
The nurse is leading me away from the coach, I do not struggle. The Asylum For Wayward Victorian Girls is by new home now; it'll steal away my memories of my previous life and numb my heart ache. I am taken to the large wooded door; the nurse raises a meaty fist and pounds on it.
"Inmate!" She yells.
I'm guessing she means me. The door swings open, like an old man that has been forced to get up after a snooze, it yawns. The room is empty, it has a high ceiling and wooden panelled walls, it smells of varnish. Now, I really do have to ask this: Is there is no one in the room then how on earth did the door open? The nurse tugs me into the room and points to a wooden bench by the side; it is the same dark brown as the walls. The door slams shut. I sit, there is no cushion, and I feel numb. She ties the leash to a metal ring that has been nailed to the wall behind me, way out of my reach.
"Stay." She's not a woman of many words, is she?
I nod and she walks across the room and out of a door that had seemed almost invisible to me. I blame the panels. She closes the door behind her and I wait for her to be back. When I say wait I actually mean that I put my head against the wall and cried.
I told Denzil that I came to the Asylum because I had fallen in love with another girl, but that wasn't the only reason. They say that I am delusional, that I am hiding behind a name because I am too afraid to face reality. They say that Freedom Sparks is not me. I spat at them when I heard this. She is me, she is real. She is what I am and what I'm not; she's what I want to be. They say I'm Lucie Elizabeth Lymer, the daughter of Marcus Lymer and Charlotte Lymer. I'm not anymore.
I hear the door open again and I look up, brushing the tears from my stinging eyes. It's not the nurse, it's a girl.
She has dark green hair that has been swept up into a messy bun on the top of her head; I can detect a small plastic fork sticking out of it. She is wearing a powder blue corset, glistening with many pearls and a small pair of striped puffy shorts. My eyes travel up her not-particularly-long legs, taking in the fishnet stockings that she has clothed herself in.
"Have you finished staring?" She has an upper-class accent; it puts my weak northern one to shame.
"Not yet, no." I give her a watery smile and sniff away any evidence that I was upset. It doesn't seem to work.
"You're rude."
"You're standing in front of me wearing barely anything at all with your legs ever so slightly apart and accusing me of being rude? I must say, that's quite unfair."
She smiles at me and walks over, her boots click-clack on the tiles. She stands on the bench and reaches up, she's taller than me and she can undo the knotted leash with the tips of her fingers.
Yes...I am staring again.
She allows the leather to slide through her hands and I spring up, glad to be free. She hops down and holds out her hand...I am unsure of what to do.
"It's custom here to kiss a lady's hand, did you know?"
I did not know. A take her hand and kiss her knuckles, it feels rather nice. She takes her hand away and places it by her side; she stands up straight and tilts her chin upwards. My English tutor taught me never to trust a person with correct posture.
"I'm Eliza Spencer."
"I'm Freedom Sparks." I say this with pride, I am proud.
"Is that the name your mother gave you?" She asks me with shameful curiosity, I'm guessing that she was taught not to be nosy.
"No, it's better." That's all I say, I do not want to talk about it right now. "Where's the nurse?"
"Melinda told me to show you around, she had a headache."
"You call the nurses by their first names?"
A flirtatious smile spreads across her lips and her hands now travel up, until they reach her hips. "Only when they're not around."
I think I like Eliza Spencer.
She offers me her arm and I take it, together we walk through the door and out of the panelled room to through a corridor. A terribly cliché corridor, it is lengthy and winding. I notice that after thirty steps or so, the stripy wall paper changes in colour and there is a small arch that merges with another winding corridor that is almost identical to the one we are travelling down. After two hundred and thirty steps, three times of seeing black and blue stripes and tripping up only once; Eliza turns sharply to her right and takes me through an arch.
This corridor is short and I can see where she is taking me. A mess hall. When I say 'Mess Hall' I mean this sarcastically of course, it's far from 'Mess'-ey.
The hall is wide and has the same high ceiling as the room I was previously in, the walls are painted a strange speckled gruel grey. There are strict lines of benches that are pushed up painfully against long tables that run the whole length of the hall, there are a few girls sitting on these benches. I have no idea how they managed to squeeze themselves between the two pieces of splinter-inducing furniture. The girls are dressed in that scandalous sparkly under garments that Eliza seems to fond of, maybe it's a sort of uniform that perverted doctors force on us. I hope that I don't have to wear a corset; I'd disappear to anyone viewing me from the side.
Eliza approaches one of the flocks, this one contains three girls. The one closest to me is sitting on the table, she has a fluffy tutu on that she has paired up with a grey bustier and has covered her legs in mis-matched striped stockings. They seem to like stripes here. She has pastel purple hair that looks like a birds nest, rather like mine. She notices us approaching and smiles, Eliza drops my arm.
"Ah, Liza! Newcomer?"
"Oui." I reply, I sometimes recite the odd French that I know when I am nervous and want to make a good impression...Stop laughing.
The girl next to her looks at me, her hair is more interesting. Her bangs have been grown out, I guess that they reach her waist when she's standing up, the rest of her locks have been chopped at randomly, and they cover the top half of her pointed ears. Her hair colour is interesting as well; it's a mix between bleach blonde, blue, pink and yellow. You need to see it up close to understand. She wears a long red coat and black tights. And an eye patch, a faded black one with a greying cross stitched onto it. I don't know if it's a prop or not.
"This is Freedom Sparks. It's not her real name." Eliza tells the group, purple-hair smiles again and the interesting one nods.
Very interesting...
The last girl sits on the floor; she has bronze-ing curly hair and a dress that seems to be made entirely out of patches of different fabric. She has a button nose and a freckled face; she would look like a three year old if she did not have a decently sized chest. She waves. I smile.
"I'm Catrina." Purple-hair introduces herself with the same smile that she used before. Her smiles are strange, not quite this world-ly. "This is Scat." She gestures to the girl on the floor. "And this is-"
"River Rook." The interesting one has an interesting name too, "It's not my real name either."
Catrina fills the silence yet again, I think she has a thing about them, "Welcome Freedom, can I call you Free?"
"Go ahead."
"Ok then, Free. The first rule of The Asylum is to stay invisible; the doctors won't pick on you if you stay quiet. The second is to follow the rats."
"The rats?" I have a mutual respect when it comes to rats, they do not bother me but I can't say that the sight of them fills me with joy.
"The rats will show you where to go at four o clock." Scat says in a matter-of-fact tone that makes me feel like a toddler.
"Don't tell anyone about four o clock." River drones, I look to her and realise that she isn't even looking at me. "Everyone knows about four o clock but if you are caught conversing about it then it'll get shut down."
"Why?" I attempt to move into her line of sight, she looks away.
"Because the doctors are dicks."
I think I love River Rook.