by Jill Kiesow
I dream of asylums. Always, they are multi-tiered, shaky structures with tall, barred windows disrupting one’s view from the inside. But there’s no longer anyone to look out.
The grounds are bare, shrouded in perpetual bleak winter, trod upon only by the restless ghosts of former residents. Inmates, held under the guise of science, tortured in the spirit of cruelty. Ragged, ethereal, frosty girls sweep away snow, claw at frozen earth, rest porcelain cheeks on stiff moss. Faded pink satin chokers encircle their necks, cutting, searching futilely for lifeblood. These girls can no longer be wounded.
It is easy to imagine a different scene entirely. One in which beautiful, composed,
pink-cheeked young ladies sit on green grass, white skirts tucked under legs, manners and bodies intact and vital. Nannies stand nearby, offering dainty morsels and unwarranted praise. In this reality birds sing, flowers bloom, well-bred blood courses through blue veins.
This reality, this lawn, is not the setting of my dreams though. My girls came later, after the deserted mansion became a girls’ home, then the asylum where any small carelessness was enough to warrant a prison term and, eventually, a death sentence.
The building is boarded and thought to be vacant now, because no one takes into account the ghastly girls who cannot find a place of peace for which to leave this hell.
I try to help them and I cannot. I don’t exist inside the dream.
They say if you die in a dream, your body dies. If you died in the asylum, you live on forever, frozen to that world like wet skin to ice.
Jill Kiesow won the Lakefly Writers Conference short story award in 2018, and has pieces in several Clarendon House anthologies, The Matador Review, Lunch Ticket, and more. Her novel, Wet Wings, is available now. Jill is a Reiki practitioner, vegan, and animal advocate, has worked at a shelter, and volunteers for two dog rescues. Online at jillkiesow.com, on Facebook @jillmkiesow, on Instagram @dogmomswrite.
