i posted some pics on flickr awhile back. sometimes, i forget they’re online.

It’s freaking brilliant. It’s a fantasy. You know, like sword and sorcery.

What kind of power does your hero have?

She talks to cats. I grin.

She talks to cats.

His unenthusiastic monosyllabic response makes me feel stupid. Maybe my idea isn’t so brilliant after all. My disappointment must have shown on my face, because he follows up with a smile.

And, of course, your hero is a beautiful, independent, strong, smart Filipina.

That goes without saying, I reply.

We laugh. I feel brilliant again.

I elaborate, Her cats are all named after my hunter’s cats in WoW.

I thought you had quit that game.

I rejoined my old guild, too. I missed my friends.

He frowns. And how are you getting along with your co-leader?

I’m not co-leading with him anymore, so I don’t have to talk to him as much. I’m keeping up my boundaries. I’m not going to play unless I want to.

Well, it is voluntary, he says.

It’s supposed to be, but sometimes, playing WoW feels like a job.

WoW is what my therapist and I talk about because I don’t want to talk about the hard stuff.

At the end of therapy, he tells me that I’ve been delightful, in a lively mood.

Wouldn’t it be wonderful if you finished your novel?

It would be awesome, I say.

“Your name isn’t on the list,” the grim-faced bouncer said, drawing his fat stubby finger on the tablet as he pretended to search the guest list.

“Check again,” I said silkily. The prismatic curved horns on my temples were starting to itch. I was going to kill Fatex if he’d neglected to fill out the requisition form again. Not only wouldn’t I get into the Firehouse, but I’d have to put the drinks on my tab. The cocktails in this particular shitty nightclub cost fifty dinero apiece. I never carried more than three hundred when I was working.

“Look, hunter, you’re gonna have to find another dive to give tail.”

I narrowed my eyes.

“No pun intended,” he added.

I leaned over the red rope cordoning the line, and grabbed the red-bearded dwarf by the collar of his purple vinyl jacket.

“For a tawdry caract of so little intelligence, you somehow managed to insult my sexual proclivity and race in the same word and my occupation in the same sentence.” I breathed into his face, trying not to inhale the dwarf’s nauseating tobacco fume. His cheeks flushed, and sweat beaded on his forehead. I didn’t lay down the heat. “My tail is twitchy, and the more I breathe on you, the thirstier I get. Convince me you’d made a mistake.”

He clutched the Cerulean blue hand that was gripping his collar. He yowled when his fingers sizzled.

“You are as stupid as I thought. Everyone knows it’s usually fatal to touch a Cerulean, especially a female.”

He was gasping for breath, even though I’d been careful not to touch his skin.

“So, are you going to convince me, or what? Is my name on the list?” I released him.

“Of course, Authenticator Batsheba, your name is on the list.”

“Show me.”

“Right here.” He pointed to the entry on the tablet.

Good. Now that my identity was on record, I could charge my drinks to the Agency.

The bouncer unlatched the rope. I took a deliberate step forward on my platform heels.

“One more thing,” I drawled.

“Yes, Authenticator?” the dwarf quavered.

“Who instructed you to keep me out?”

“Who?” Still quavering.

“Who told you to lie to me?” I stared him down, which didn’t take much effort considering he was a dwarf.

“The Author.”

“I know that,” I said impatiently. “Which one?”

“Shaman Andramedy.”

“Excellent.” And just to be nice, I gave him a ten dinero tip. I wouldn’t need to spend money tonight, anyway.

I crossed the red carpet into the foyer of the nightclub, where a pair of security guards menacingly approached me, their brawny chests bulging, thumbs latched on their belts, and steel-toed boots gleaming. Humans. I grimaced.

“I have a better chance of getting Johnny Depp than you have of getting Dr Novak,” Clancy says their first night together.

“I don’t want to get Dr Novak,” Noreen adamantly replies.

“As least, Johnny wouldn’t get in trouble if I got with him. Novak could lose his license if he slept with you.”

“I don’t want to sleep with him.”

“Yes, you do. Who wouldn’t want to? He’s cute.”

Noreen giggles like a little girl. “Yeah, he is.”

On the other side of the room, Clancy rolls her eyes. Noreen shuts hers tight and pulls up the covers to her chin.

“Well, Johnny would get in trouble if his wife found out. Everyone would hate you for breaking up their marriage.”

“I don’t care what people think.”

“I do. I’m a people pleaser.”

“Fuck that psycho babble. I hate being labeled. My psychiatrist diagnosed me as borderline. Now he wants to put me in some Zen meditation therapy group. He said I need to learn how to control my emotions. Fuck you, I said. I stormed out of his office, went back to my apartment, drank all the rest of my vodka, and stabbed my arm with
a kitchen knife.”

“I noticed that.”

Clancy’s left arm is heavily bandaged. The gauze wraps are rusty red in the spots where blood has seeped through.

A nurse carrying a clipboard peeks into their room. He has checked on them every fifteen minutes during his shift. The women are on Level 1 lockdown for suicidal ideation and don’t have patio privileges. Noreen started her seventy-two hour hold two nights ago.

“You’re lucky you’ve got Novak,” Clancy says. “I have Bradley again.Last time I had him, he put me in Room 208 because I pulled off the curtain around my bed. I wrapped it around my neck. He accused me of trying to kill myself. I just wanted to feel something. If I wanted to kill myself, I told him, I could have used my bed sheets. He said I was doing it to cause drama, to get some attention. I can’t fake the way I feel, you moron, I screamed at him. So they put me in isolation with a pillow and a blanket and a mattress on the floor, and watched me on the monitor in the nursing station.”

“At least they didn’t put you in restraints.”

“I heard they don’t use restraints here anymore. This is one of the best teaching hospitals in the country. They actually want to help you here. This place is like a five-star hotel compared to the other psych wards I’ve been locked up in. This is the first place I take myself if I’m feeling suicidal. If they don’t have any beds here, they bus me out. One time, I ended up at County.”

Through pale blue eyes, Clancy stares at the ceiling. Her head, crowned with spiky pink hair, rests on the underside of her right forearm, while her left arm lies woodenly by her side.

“What’s County like?” Noreen breaks the silence.

“It’s a zoo, and when you leave, you feel worse than when you came in.”

“God, I hope I never end up there.”

“You won’t. Look at you, you even brought your own blanket from home. I could give a shit about myself.”

Giggling, Noreen uncurls her knees and flops on her back. Her wavy black hair fans out on the pillow.

“You know what we should do, we should order some pizza, you shouldn’t have drank all that vodka, you selfish bitch, you should have saved some for the party. Oh my God, I can’t stop laughing. I swear to God, they spiked my pills, they spiked my pills, oh shit, that’s like fucking ironic. How can you fucking spike pills that are already spiked? Pills spike you out. They’re supposed to. That’s what they’re made for. You pop one and all the world goes psychedelic and shit. You move in slow motion or you’re spinning and vomiting your brains out because you feel like you have more than one brain, I have one that goes up and another that goes down, sometimes they roller-coaster all in the same day. Or maybe I have an elevator brain, one side up, one side down, because the fucking trigger in my brain keeps pushing my buttons.”

Noreen sits up, her long hair falling gracefully down her back like the white lace curtains hanging against the windows in her mother’s house.

“I don’t know how you do that.”

“Do what?” Noreen giggles.

“Laugh like a maniac and talk like one of those crazy people on the streets and still look and sound like a princess.” Clancy has been watching and listening to her the whole time.

“I am a princess. I’m a royal fucking gypsy. I’m nomadic. I have no home. And I dance.”

Noreen stands and twirls on her tiptoes. “I’m going to the nursing station to ask them to order us some pizza and they’ll bring in a radio so we can dance and the bottle of vodka from your apartment instead of the tap water they fill in our pink hospital pitchers. I’m a princess, and I can have anything I want.”

Laughing and singing, in her sweatpants and t-shirt, Noreen runs and stumbles out of the room.

“Great,” Clancy mutters to herself, “not another rapid cycling bipolar.”

After another round of checks, Clancy gets out of bed and walks to the nursing station to take her night meds. Obviously sedated, Noreen sits groggily in the chair in front of the nursing station, while her nurse checks her blood pressure and other vitals.

“So, no pizza?” Clancy asks.

“Here’s what we think is wrong with you,” he says.

“Sometimes children in troubled families develop coping skills to help them survive, but when they become adults those coping skills don’t work the same way anymore.”

I stare at the curtain separating my bed from my roommate’s. My fingers tremble and cover my chin, lips, jaw.

“I can’t remember how to be an adult. I’m scared I won’t be able to write again.”

“You will. These medications can help. You could be in therapy for a year, two, maybe more, but you’ll learn new coping skills. You can live a normal life.”

“I want to. I want that more than anything.” I look him in the eye. I see his compassion. His eyes are green, his hair is brown. He smiles in a way that makes me yearn to touch him, but I don’t.

“I believe in you,” he says. “I can tell you’re a strong person.”

“I am a strong person. I am. I’m a strong person,” I recite like a prayer.

“Listen, we’re going to take you off the Seroquel and start you on an antidepressant. I’ll come back with the consent form,” he pauses. “Don’t worry. Everything will be fine.”

After he leaves, I curl up on my bed and pull up the covers. I weep until my day nurse comes to help.