Monday, July 25, 2011

Crazy is As Crazy Does

This is a snippet of a story that I was writing for a flash fiction prompt (I can't remember where at the moment), but never finished. I just kind of lost interest in wherever this was going. But I thought I'd post it anyway, just because I liked how it started out. 

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We're all mad here. That could be the motto for the Placido Group Home, as far as Jimmy was concerned. Of course they were all mad. Everyone's a loon in the looney bin. The smiling nurses. The scowling nurses. The outwardly caring and concerned but secretly resentful doctors. The guy who silently navigates the maze of game tables and upended plastic chairs to mop up the various spills and messes made by the patients wearing their institutional thousand-yard stares.

Jimmy wasn't crazy. He'd be the first to tell you. He was just your garden variety psychopath. The difference between the two, he would gladly explain if you were unfortunate enough to meet his eye in the visitor's room, is choice. An insane person is crazy by accident. A freak of nature, and error in the brain's biochemistry. A psycho is that way by force of will. There's intent there. A psychopath isn't born to madness - they're made, he'll say, his face bright with earnest conviction. And, he'll add, they're also completely sane.

If an orderly doesn't wander over to intercede on your behalf, Jimmy will expound on his theories about insanity in a world gone mad. To him it's a type of freedom. He gets to give in to the dark drives that most people spend their whole lives suppressing and self-medicating. What liberation, he exults with a whoop. A pair of middle-aged men in long robes and slippers duck their heads and move farther away. Even the other crazies give Jimmy a wide berth. There's a hierarchy in the ward.

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