although I wasn’t so sure about that. He called me in. He said … he told me I had something. He said they’d concluded their examination. That’s what he said. And he showed me a pile of papers and he said that I’d got something, some complaint. He said … he just said that, you see. You’ve got … this thing. That’s your complaint. And we’ve decided, he said, that in your interests there’s only one course we can take. He said … but I can’t … exactly remember … how he put it … he said, we’re going to do something to your brain. He said … if we don’t, you’ll be in here for the rest of your life, but if we do, you stand a chance. You can go out, he said, and live like the others. What do you want to do to my brain, I said to him. But he just repeated what he’d said. Well, I wasn’t a fool. I knew I was a minor. I knew he couldn’t do anything to me without getting permission. I knew he had to get permission from my mother. So I wrote to her and told herwhat they were trying to do. But she signed their form, you see, giving them permission. I know that because he showed me her signature when I brought it up. Well, that night I tried to escape, that night. I spent five hours sawing at one of the bars on the window in this ward. Right throughout the dark. They used to shine a torch over the beds every half hour. So I timed it just right. And then it was nearly done, and a man had a … he had a fit, right next to me. And they caught me, anyway. About a week later they started to come round and do this thing to the brain. We were all supposed to have it done, in this ward. And they came round and did it one at a time. One a night. I was one of the last. And I could see quite clearly what they did to the others. They used to come round with these … I don’t know what they were … they looked like big pincers, with wires on, the wires were attached to a little machine. It was electric. They used to hold the man down, and this chief … the chief doctor, used to fit the pincers, something like earphones, he used to fit them on either side of the man’s skull. There was a man holding the machine, you see, and he’d … turn it on, and the chief would just press these pincers on either side of the skull and keep them there. Then he’d take them off. They’d cover the man up … and they wouldn’t touch him again until later on. Some used to put up a fight, but most of them didn’t. They just lay there. Well, they were coming round to me, and the night they came I got up and stood against the wall. They told me to get on the bed, and I knew they had to get me on the bed because if they did it while I was standing up they might break my spine. So I stood up and then one or two of them came for me, well, I was younger then, I was much stronger than I am now, I was quite strong then, I laid one of them out and I had another one round the throat, and then suddenly this chief had these pincers on my skull and I knew he wasn’t supposed to do it while I was standing up, that’swhy I …. anyway, he did it. So I did get out. I got out of the place … but I couldn’t walk very well. I don’t think my spine was damaged. That was perfectly all right. The trouble was … my thoughts … had become very slow … I couldn’t think at all … I couldn’t … get … my thoughts … together … uuuhh … I could … never quite get it … together. The trouble was, I couldn’t hear what people were saying. I couldn’t look to the right or the left, I had to look straight in front of me, because if I turned my head round … I couldn’t keep … upright. And I had these headaches. I used to sit in my room. That was when I lived with my mother. And my brother. He was younger than me. And I laid everything out, in order, in my room, all the things I knew were mine, but I didn’t die. The thing is, I should have been dead. I should have died. Anyway, I feel much better now. But I don’t talk to
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