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MESHUGA - (of a person) crazy.

Maybe everyone in this world is crazy and the people in mental hospitals are the only ones who are honest about it

"Mr. Hellion, it's time to take ur pills," says an old crone who's wearing the standard yellow smocks of a nurse in Massachusetts State Mental Ward.

Mr. Hellion shakes his head violently in protest. Why should this hag of a woman command his life? But, the Others. They must be silenced. The woman looks at the man sternly, her wrinkled and leathery face contorts angrily.

"Who's to stop me, eh? You're helpless in this wheelchair of yours," she growls as if reading Mr. Hellion's mind.

"Ah! Oh god, she can read minds," Mr. Hellion screams, "Help me, Doctors!"

The old crone snorts, "I am your doctor."

The woman pins the handicapped man with the ease of someone who's been doing it for decades and forces the pills down her patient's throat. She releases her grip on the man and slaps him across the face several times. Mr. Hellion winces after each blow, tears begin to form under his eyes.

"Don't cry," the nurse says brusquely, "Or you know what happens."

Mr. Hellion looks up to his captor sharply and inhales a quick breath. Slowly the old crone draws a knife concealed behind her yellow coat. The woman licks the knife anticipatively and rolls up one of the legs on his checkered hospital gown. She slides the knife across his useless legs several times and watches the blood well up and start to run slowly. Fear runs rampantly through Mr. Hellion's eyes.

Within a few seconds Mr. Hellion stops his resisting and sits tranquilly in his wheelchair. The old nurse smiles a smile filled with malice. Her favorite time in her miserable day of work is when she can subdue her screaming and irritating patients and create a quiet peacefulness. The nurse wheels Mr. Hellion out of his small room furnished only with a bed and down the dimly lit hallway. Several of the lights in the ceiling flicker forebodingly as the two make their way through the space.

The helpless man sitting quietly in the wheelchair simply smiles vacantly and stares straight ahead. His mind has been such a flurry of consciousnesses, a ceaseless cacophony of demanding voices, beckoning voices. Now his mind is a blank slate. An endless white room filled with nothing but himself and empty space. Mr. Hellion too basks in the glory of tranquility. But, he realizes eventually, despite the chaos he enjoys the constant nagging of the Others. It's lonely when you are the only voice in your head.

The nurse rounds a corner of the brick hallway. Another nurse in the same yellow smocks pass them. She nods slightly while the old crone ignores the woman indignantly. Suddenly the aging nurse realizes that despite the disruptive and erratic behaviors of all her patients, the quietness just begins to feel a little drab. There is promised excitement in the chaos.

Death is the purest form of healing

The Others always start to return several hours before Mr. Hellion has to take the next set of pills. It starts as a whisper, a quiet voice in the night. You think you hear something one moment and the next you convince yourself it was nothing. But the whisper always turns into a roar soon enough. The Others scream at Mr. Hellion to let them into the light, let them take control. Their cries are impossible to ignore but possible to refuse. Mr. Hellion tells the Others that if they took control catastrophe would strike them. This hospital is already bad enough. If that old crone discovered his passengers she would usher in a time of beatings previously undreamt of.

Mr. Hellion waits for the old crone to arrive. Although her pills free him for a time from the Others, they also silence his self as well. Such treatment of fellow human beings is abominable.

But, the old crone doesn't come. Mr. Hellion waits and waits some more. Hours more pass by. Noon comes and goes. The voices of the Others grow louder and become triumphant. Mr. Hellion sees them approaching the light. The closer they get the farther he seems from it.

"Oh, where are you nurse? The bane of my existence. The terrible spirit who tortures me for the pleasure of it. Where is my strife? Where is my pain? Where are the pills you always so lovingly administer? Where is your steady hand when I need it most?" Mr. Hellion cries aloud, tears beginning to roll down his cheeks.

Mr. Hellion realizes the Others aren't passengers of his but instead are of the past. They are the dead constantly reaching out to a troubled soul to join them in their purgatory.

For a moment dim images of his childhood flash before Mr. Hellion. His father a reckless and abusive drunk starkly contrasted by his sunflower of a mother. Mr. Hellion remembers his father coming home drunk and locking his youngest daughter, Olivia, with him in his bedroom. He remembers when Father would emerge from that cursed bedroom and see his wife crying helplessly. Her other four kids gathered around her confused and scared, but wanting to help. Father would rip Mother to her feet and beat her senseless.

Mr. Hellion remembers ten years later shortly before his fifteenth birthday his father coming home sober, an extremely rare event, and bringing his growing son up to the roof of their small Manhattan apartment. The two sling their legs over the ledges of the old edifice. The young boy looks to his father and is astounded to see tears sliding down his ruddy face.

"When you are as broken as I am," Mr. Hellion's father starts, "Raising kids is more than a daunting task. So, I didn't raise my kids, I didn't love them, I didn't offer them a safe place to grow and thrive. I am a miserable soul, son. I'm a degenerate son of a—"

"Father," Mr. Hellion remembers interjecting, "If you are bleeding out and broken, that blood will spill onto everyone surrounding you. All you can do now is focus on healing. That's all anyone can ever do really."

Heavier tears slide down Father's face now.

"Who am I to be so mercilessly cruel to my children only to be told this by one of them? I don't deserve you, Marques,"

Father looks down at the street and sidewalk far, far below. He looks to his son one last time before scooting himself several inches forward and plummets into the abyss that wipes away unbearable guilt.

Mr. Hellion remembers the years that followed. Becoming a drunk like his father that led to him murdering a man in a bar when he was 23 and getting sent to this prison, Massachusetts State Mental Ward.

And so, as Mr. Hellion sees the dead calling out to him he reaches back and embraces their cold otherworldly grasps.

Mr. Hellion wakes abruptly in a cold sweat. Breathing hard he looks to his right where his lovely wife lies quietly snoring in the adorable way she does. Carefully he exits the bed and bedroom of their apartment. He walks to where his five children sleep and sees them safe, soundly sleeping underneath their covers. Eddie, Lola, Richard, Olivia, and Marques.