There’s a hard plastic mug set in a holder on a small table to my left. A straw sticks out of it, I ease my lips around the head of the straw and swallow. Flat Coke. It hurts going down, but after a couple of mouthfuls it’s wonderful.

Refreshed, I study my cell. Padded walls. Dim lights. A steel door with a strong plastic panel in the upper half, instead of glass.

I stumble to the panel and stare out. Can’t see much—the area beyond is dark, so the plastic’s mostly reflective. I study my face in the makeshift mirror. My eyes aren’t my own—bloodshot, wild, rimmed with black circles. Lips bitten to tatters. Scratches on my face—self-inflicted. Hair cut short, tighter than I’d like. A large purple bruise on my forehead.

A face pops up close on the other side of the glass. I fall backwards with fright. The door opens and a large, smiling woman enters. “It’s OK,” she says softly. “My name’s Leah. I’ve been looking after you.”

“Wh-wh… where am I?” I gasp.

“Someplace safe,” she replies. She bends and touches the bruise on my forehead with two soft, gentle fingers. “You’ve been through hell, but you’re OK now. It’s all uphill from here. Now that you’ve snapped out of your delirium, we can work on…”

I lose track of what Leah’s saying. Behind her, in the doorway, I imagine a pair of demons— Vein and Artery. The sane part of me knows they aren’t real, just visions, but that part of me has no control over my senses any more. Backing up against one of the padded walls, I stare blankly at the make-believe demons as they dance around my cell, making crude gestures and mimed threats.

Leah goes on talking. The imaginary Vein and Artery go on dancing. I slip back into the shell of my nightmares—almost gratefully.

In and out. Quiet moments of reality. Sudden flashes of insanity and terror.

I’m being held in an institute for people with problems—that’s all any of my nurses will tell me. No names. No mingling with the other patients. White rooms. Nurses—Leah, Kelly, Tim, Aleta, Emilia and others, all nice, all concerned, all unable to coax me back from my nightmares when they strike. Doctors with names which I don’t bother memorising. They examine me at regular intervals. Make notes. Ask questions.

What did you see?

What did the killers look like?

Why do you insist on calling them demons?

You know demons aren’t real. Who are the real killers?

One of them asks if I committed the murders. She’s a grey-haired, sharp-eyed woman. Not as kindly as the rest. The ‘bad doctor’ to their ‘good doctors’. She presses me harder as the days slip by. Challenges me. Shows me photos which make me cry.

I start calling her Doctor Slaughter, but only to myself, not out loud. When she comes with her questions and cold eyes, I open myself to the nightmares—always hovering on the edges, eager to embrace me—and lose myself to the real world. After a few of these intentional fade-outs, they obviously decide to abandon the shock tactics and that’s the last I see of Doctor Slaughter.

Time dragging or disappearing into nightmares. No ordinary time. No lazy afternoons or quiet mornings. The murders impossible to forget. Grief and fear tainting my every waking and sleeping moment.

Routines are important, according to my doctors and nurses, who wish to put a stop to my nightmarish withdrawals. They’re trying to get me back to real time. They surround me with clocks. Make me wear two watches. Stress the times at which I’m to eat and bathe, exercise and sleep.

Lots of pills and injections. Leah says it’s only temporary, to calm me down. Says they don’t like dosing patients here. They prefer to talk us through our problems, not make us forget them.

The drugs numb me to the nightmares, but also to everything else. Impossible to feel interest or boredom, excitement or despair. I wander around the hospital—I have a free run now that I’m no longer violent—in a daze, zombiefied, staring at clock faces, counting the seconds until my next pill.

Off the pills. Coming down hard. Screaming fits. Fighting the nurses. Craving numbness. Needing pills!

They ignore my screams and pleas. Leah explains what’s happening. I’m on a long-term treatment plan. The drugs put a stop to the nightmares and anchored me in the real world—step one. Now I have to learn to function in it as a normal person, free of medicinal depressants—step two.

I try explaining my situation to her—my nightmares won’t ever go away, because the demons I saw were real—but she refuses to listen. Nobody believes me when I talk about the demons. They accept that I was in the house at the time of the murders, and that I witnessed something dreadful, but they can’t see beyond human horrors. They think I imagined the demons to mask the truth. One doctor says it’s easier to believe in demons than evil humans. Says a wicked person is far scarier than a fanciful demon.

Moron! He wouldn’t say that if he’d seen the crocodile-headed Vein or the cockroach-crowned Artery!

Gradual improvement. I lose my craving for drugs and no longer throw fits. But I don’t progress as quickly as my doctors anticipated. I keep slipping back into the world of nightmares, losing my grip on reality. I don’t talk openly with my nurses and doctors. I don’t discuss my fears and pains. Sometimes I babble incoherently and can’t interpret the words of those around me. Or I’ll stand staring at a tree or bush through one of the institute windows all day long, or not get up in the morning, despite the best rousing efforts of my nurses. I’m fighting them. They don’t believe my story, so they can’t truly understand me, so they can’t really help me. So I fight them. Out of fear and spite.

Somewhere in the middle of the confusion, relatives arrive. The doctors want me to focus on the world outside this institute. They think the way to do that is to reintroduce me to my family, break down my sense of overwhelming isolation. I think the plan is for the visitors to fuss over me, so that I want to be with them, so I’ll then play ball with the doctors when they start in with the questions.

Aunt Kate’s the first. She clutches me tight and weeps. Talks about Mum, Dad and Gret nonstop, recalling all the good times that she can remember. Begs me to let the doctors help me, to talk with them, so I can get better and go home and live with her. I say nothing, just stare off into space and think about Dad hanging upside-down. Aunt Kate leaves less than an hour later, still sobbing.

More relatives drop in during the following days and weeks, rounded up by the doctors. Aunts, uncles, cousins—both sides of the family tree. Some are old acquaintances. Some I’ve never seen before. I don’t respond to any of them. I can tell they’re just like the doctors. They don’t believe me.

Lots of questions from my carers. Why don’t I talk to my relatives? Do I like them? Are there others I prefer? Am I afraid of people? How would I feel about leaving here and staying with one of the well-wishers for a while?

They’re trying to ship me out. It’s not that they’re sick of me—just step three on my path to recovery.

Since I won’t rally to their calls in here, they hope that a taste of the real world will make me more receptive. (I haven’t developed any great insights into the human way of thinking—I know all this because Leah and the other nurses tell me. They say it’s good for me to know what they’re thinking, what their plans are.)

I do my best to give them what they want—I’d love if they could cure me—but it’s difficult. The relatives remind me of what happened. They can’t act naturally around me. They look at me with pitying—sometimes fearful expressions. But I try. I listen. I respond.

After much preparation and discussion, I spend a weekend with Uncle Mike and his family. Mike is Mum’s younger brother. He has a pretty wife—Rosetta—and three children, two girls and a boy. Gret and I stayed with them a few times in the past, when Mum and Dad were away on holidays.