esc.

There’s never more than one bird in a painting on the wall of a mental health center. It’s very lonely to stare at while the receptionist’s voice becomes the sound of loose gravel in the playground of the elementary school where I learned I wasn’t meant to be alive.

You’re not here with me. 

You’re not sitting in the chair next to me, but something is making the left side of my body warm. 

It’s not you.

An older man in an electric wheelchair smells like my dad did when he came home from work. Stale sweat and rye. Burned tobacco isn’t how I smell anymore. I’ve quit killing myself ritualistically every hour on the hour. Smokes are fifteen dollars a pack. 

It’s cheaper to do heroin, maybe. 

It’s cheaper to tell the psychiatrist I’ve been having panic attacks in public. I’ve been having heart attacks while people talk to me in the middle of a crowded bar. I need lorazepam. Need something. Need another vice to keep myself well rounded.

The PSYCH MAN appears just as the receptionist hangs up the phone. I look to the painting of the bird as though it’s going to say goodbye. Bye, bye.

“I’ve read through your file,” PSYCH MAN says.

“Cool,” I said. “Anything good?”

“This is an intake interview. I will assess your need of services.”

“Cool.”

There’s a pamphlet for an ADHD medication on the window sill. I keep looking at it. It’s a bird snare for the eyes of a fiend. He will think I am a drug seeker if I ask for narcotics. I am a drug seeker, but they should know finding drugs isn’t difficult for me anymore. 

I keep looking over to the ADHD pamphlet, and the psychiatrist asks me what has been troubling me lately, if anything.

“Can’t focus. Can’t concentrate. Sluggish. Sad.”

PSYCH MAN scratches out some shit on a notepad.

The feeling in my bones is that I will not be getting help today. They will interview me, and in six months call to set up an appointment another six months later. It’s all free, which is why it sucks so bad. 

There’s a weird vibe in the air not unlike the one bird in the portrait hanging on the wall of the lobby. The bird was black. Blackbird. I thought about crows. I thought about you.

“I feel like I have to escape this reality somehow,” I said with the doctor in mid spiel.

“Oh?” he said leaning in. “What do you mean by that.”

“In Montreal, I remember hearing people saying they needed to pull me out. They wanted to pull me out of wherever I was. I was in a hospital bed and an industrial vent was behind my head,” I looked at the adhd pamphlet again. “I think something trapped me in a dream, or purgatory or something.”

“Do you believe in purgatory?”

“I didn’t before,” I said. “Have you ever been to an escape room?”

“No,” PSYCH MAN said. “What is it?”

“It’s a locked room where you have to solve a bunch of puzzles to get out of it.”

“What does that have to do with this?”

“I think I can escape. I think this. All of this. This reality, is just a puzzle I can solve, and once I solve it, I get to go back.”

“Hm,” PSYCH MAN said. “Go back to where?”

“Hm,” I said. “Hmm.”

“Is there anything wrong with your current life?” PSYCH MAN said with the pen hanging out of his mouth.

“Other than the fact that it’s not real?”