The Padded 'Sell'

(Inspired by Billy Cox's There Is No Elephant In This Room over at the Herald Tribune and Terry Bisson's They're Made Out of Meat).

I went back to the psychiatric hospital today, to see Shermie, Dawkie, Frenchie, Wisie and all the other guys.

As soon as they saw me they said, “Where’ve you been hiding yourself?”

“Hiding myself?” I said, “I’ve been outside.”

To a man they all burst out laughing.

“What’s the joke?” I asked.

They give me that warm, friendly, amused, slightly disapproving but above all very knowing look of theirs.

“What?” I spluttered, but they just kept looking at me.

“Okay, humour me and pretend I don’t know what you mean…” I said.

“’Outside’,” they said, “You know full well there’s no such thing.”

“There isn’t…? Then, where’ve I been all this time?”

They give a weary collective sigh. “You’ve been hiding of course. It’s what you do - you pretend. You pretend there’s an outside, hide, then hope we won’t realise.”

“An’ have you ever checked to see whether I’m hiding?”

“Two things - first: there IS no outside, therefore you HAVE to’ve been hiding; second: searching for you’d only pander to your delusions.”

“…but haven’t I offered to prove to you loads of times there’s an outside by letting you watch me leave?”

“Yes, and several times we’ve offered to test your alleged ability to LEAVE but you’ve always refused to submit to SCIENTIFIC testing.”

“Ye’, but that’s only because the only way I know of getting out of here’s via the front door whereas your idea of scientifically testing me’s to lock me in a safe in the basement wrapped in hundreds of chains and padlocks because - or so you claim - if I really CAN leave this place then I should be able to LEAVE under what you insist on calling ‘scientifically controlled conditions’; an’ all I keep on sayin’ is since I’ve only ever claimed to be able to leave by the front door, why can’t I just be allowed to LEAVE by the front door?”

“WHAT front door!!!???”

“Okay, OKAY, sorry, SORRY, I guess I’m making you tetchy now…you probably need your afternoon nap…”

“Our WHAT?”

“Your nap – don’t all the inmates of this place have to take an afternoon nap?”

They burst out laughing, pounding down their fists on their thighs so hard I feared they might break their legs.

“You’re nothing if not consistent,” they said, flicking away tears from their eyes.

“Okay,” I said, “It’s been nice seeing you guys, again. I guess I’m jus’ go’n’o go now…”

“’Outside’, of course?”

“Er, well, ye’ - where else…?”

“Well off you go, then, playing your little hiding away game…with all the other ‘visitors’ from ‘outside’ who’re either really just fellow patients or complete figments of your imagination nobody else can see…”

“Oh, before I finally leave the high security area, is there anything you’d like me to pass on to any of your personal psychiatrists on my way out?”

Well that was it - they now doubled up and began stamping on the floor so hard I genuinely thought some of them’d be sick from an inability to stop laughing.

“Oh, dear, you’re a natural comedian if nothing else, but this’s the one area where your little ‘routine’ needs seriously reworking: you see, according to the ‘logic’ of your psychotic narrative there’re 'other' parties ‘out there’ who’re not only smarter than us, and know more than us, but who supposedly hold us in subservience to them in some way; yet to anyone with even the teensiest scrap of intelligence – or, indeed, sanity – it’s perfectly obvious it is US who’re the epitome of all intelligence in the world, US who’re the ones who REALLY know what’s actually going on, and therefore US who hold everyone else in subservience to US.”

I was actually almost tempted to try reasoning with them again, to try explaining to them one final time that until they came out of their delusional state of psychotic omniscience they’d never even get the chance to so much as leave their ward, never mind go 'outside', but since they seemed so happy and content ensconced in their comfortable little dream world where they were the lords and masters of all they surveyed, who was I to try to force them to wake up.