An Alternative Explanation

The pills didn’t help. None of them. Not the sedatives, not the anti-anxiety meds, not the anti-psychotics. Not a single one of the pills, capsules or injections they’d treated her with in the last three months, two weeks and four days had helped; not the red ones, not the blue ones and not the little hexagonal yellow ones.

God only knew she had wanted them to. How she’d screamed, begged and pleaded with the doctors to try something else. Anything else. Anything. ECT, she’d asked, her tongue dry and thick from the latest cocktail of meds. Lobotomy? Trepanning! Please help me. Please, please help me.

It had been one of the patients who had ultimately given her clarity, if not comfort. As Alice had sat, hugging her knees and fighting the tremors that were the latest in a long line of side effects, Dennis had shuffled towards her and said, ‘You’re fighting too hard.’

‘What?’

‘You. There’s nothing wrong with you.’

‘Of course there is.’

‘Nope.’

‘I see things that aren’t there-’

‘Nope.’

‘I do!’ As numbed as she was, her core responded to this man, this ignorant, damaged man, who was trying to turn her world on its head.

‘Oh, I’m not saying you don’t see things. I’m just saying you’re wrong to say they aren’t there.’

Lucy wasn’t sure what the sudden, lurching sensation was. Did it feel like she was falling, or floating? Was this what people meant about the world turning on its axis?

‘Stands to reason,’ Dennis went on, oblivious to what he’d just done to gravity. ‘If you can still see them, even with all the different medicines they’ve given you, then they must be there, right?’

The logic was inescapable, but were madmen…sorry, in-patients with mental health issues, actually capable of logic? Lucy blinked, her thoughts bubbling slowly up through the lava lamp of her medicated mind.

‘They’re not here now,’ she murmured.

‘Nope,’ Dennis agreed and for a wild moment, Lucy thought he could see them too. A frantic second of bliss, of kinship, after weeks of isolation. ‘You’re proper scared when they’re here,’ Dennis went on. ‘Real fear, that is.’

‘People here are scared of things that aren’t real all the time.’

‘Nope,’ Dennis said as he turned to shuffle back towards his bedroom. ‘Nope, they’re just scared of things inside their own heads.’


What if they are real? Lucy wondered, the next morning. What if she wasn’t seeing things, they weren’t hallucinations or symptoms. What if she was the only person who could see something that actually existed?

It wasn’t that she’d ever doubted that she was the only person who could see them; that much had been obvious from the very first episode. Life had slowed to detail, the pack of Fromage Frais falling to the supermarket floor as Lucy screamed in terror; and everyone around her just turned and stared. Not at it, but at her. Not at the thing that had, impossibly, pushed itself out into reality as though it had slipped through a curtain. It’s large head first, then a muscular and armoured body. The smell of it, like struck matches and cat pee. The snorting, vicious noises it made as it walked toward her with some kind of device in its hands. The oddly owlish peering at the display. No, no one in Sainsburys that morning had been worried about the creature, only about the woman who screamed herself hoarse and who wouldn’t stop until a sharp needle pierced her skin and she folded like a rag doll. Even then, Lucy had screamed; it was only that her voice no longer responded.

They’d brought her here, and she couldn’t blame them. Mental health issues were the only possible explanation. A psychotic break. Seeing things that weren’t there. Hallucinations. Medication. Don’t worry, we can help.

But they couldn’t. Time and again the creature slipped out from wherever it came from. She’d wondered if food was the link, when it appeared in the cafeteria. She’d hurled her plastic meal tray at it; goblets of gravy spinning under gravity as the thing had appeared, then retreated in the face of her reaction. When she’d woken in the night, her heart uncomfortably large and heavy in her chest, to pitch darkness and that acrid, sulphurous odour. It’s face, looming over her as it slowly panned the device along her body.

Maria had never forgiven her for the episode in group therapy; poor Maria. She had just been making progress, beginning to speak openly about some of the wounds that had been inflicted on her by those she should have been able to trust when Lucy had howled her terror and thrown her chair towards the beast. How she wished she’d had the courage to watch it land, to see if it hit something solid or had just passed through. Maybe then she’d know if it was just a figment of her imagination, or if Dennis was right.

What she needed was a clear head. The only way to get a clear head was to come off the sedatives. The only way to come off the sedatives was to stay calm; even if it came again.


Hidden, inside the solidly padded comfort of her slippers, Lucy’s toes twitched. She had discovered that this was just enough movement to release the anxiety, without others being able to see it. They had caught on to her other techniques; when she’d bitten her lip, the blood trickling from her mouth to mar the grey-white of her hospital gown had given her efforts away. When she’d dig her nails into her palms, the vivid crescents had been spotted as she took her meds. No, her coping mechanisms had to be invisible to observers. A slight shifting of focus of her eyes, making everything but what she wanted to see, hard to view. A certain steadying of her breath, counting to three, in and out, over and over. Reciting in her head a poem she had learnt in school as a child. She’d never liked it, but yet it had made a home in her memories, perhaps fated to be useful now. Robert Frost - Acceptance.

‘So, Lucy. It looks like you’re ready to be discharged today. How are you feeling about that?’

Lucy wobbled her head, left and right, ‘Good. Yes, good.’

‘Good? You don’t sound sure…’

What would I be saying now if I really was a recovered mental health patient? ‘I am sure. It’s a big step, though. But one I’m ready for.’

‘Oh I agree.’

A bird flew past the window outside and the quality of light in the room changed. It was a sign that Lucy had come to recognise: the beginning of an episode.

...It is the change to darkness in the sky…

‘It’s quite normal to feel anxious about your return to normal life, Lucy, but remember our door is always open.’

A blink and Lucy detached from her body, leaving it there to maintain the facade. Somehow, it knew when to nod, when to smile, when to curl a delicate hand. It knew not to betray her, not to wrinkle its nose as a breeze from the open window brought with it the bitter stench of the creature. It knew not to scream, or run, or curl into a ball when with a shuddering glide, it pushed its way into our reality.

‘…24-hour access to the ward, call us any time…’

…Now let the dark be dark for all of me…

Keeping her attention on the edge of the table, Lucy busied her mind with the poem, with an exploration of the grain of wood. Pondering each dent, each scratch, and how they might have come. Anything, any thought, that wasn’t of the creature which blocked out the daylight, which came between her and the therapist, which leaned close towards her.

…Let the night be too dark for me to see into the future…

‘We’ll write to your GP to let them know, and the CMH team will call you regularly…’

It was almost touching her, now. It’s breath on her face was surprisingly sweet, not the putrid mix that came with it. Up close, it’s most definitely solid presence was comforting; not an illusion. Not a hallucination. I was never ill, she thought. Dennis was right.

‘Your husband is coming to pick you up?’

Lucy auto-nodded.

The beast pulled back. In her peripheral vision, Lucy saw it jabbing buttons on its device. It cast its gaze over her one last time, then disappeared.

...Let what will be, be.

‘Good. Well, best of luck with everything, Lucy.’

‘Thank you.’

...Let what will be, be.