Jessica Sorensen - The Forgotten Girl

I walk like a zombie in a trance across the street, step by step, my eyes fixed on the water tower that I’ve seen before when I was lying in the street six years ago. A couple of cars honk their horn but I don’t so much as flinch, stepping into forest on the other side. I let my sub-conscious be my guide, hiking through trees and bushes for what feels like hours, robotically, my mind and feet numb, until finally the trees open up, then I stop and look up at the white building, shielded by half-dead trees, the roof caved in, some of the siding charred, just like the cabin where Ryland lives.

Only this isn’t a cabin.

This is the Beleview’s Mental Institution. Or it used to be anyway. Until I burnt it down. The memory comes to me, hot and fiery like the flames that burned half the building down. I lit a match.

I lit a match.

“You did it because I let you—because I wanted to escape this place,” I say, stepping out of the shelter of the trees and crossing the open toward the building. I can see some of the images in my mind. The screams. The shouting. The way the ground burned my bare feet and how I ran through the forest, trying to escape the doctor who chased me down... the blond haired doctor wearing a white coat. I ran for hours until I reached the road… then the car hit me… I lay in the road, the man leaning over me, unafraid, even though I was trying to hurt him, like he understood what I needed, what I was on the inside. How he struck a match to light his cigarette… just like Preston does every time he lights candles…

“Jesus, he was there.” I pause at the entrance of the building. It’s boarded up with a No Trespassing sign on it, which I disregard and step inside. There’s debris on the floor, papers sticking to everything, several doors lining the walls… the last one was mine… I can remember… yet I can’t… “I was here.” I walk down the entrance, tracing my hand on the walls, remembering. “I was locked up here… and I found a way out… I got a hold of a match… from my therapist… Preston… he was my therapist back then.”

The memories move over me in waves, Lily silent, giving me time to put it all together. I burned this place down with Preston’s matches, because he was my therapist back then, had me locked up in here, and it was the only way to get out. I let Lily do it—let her take control and escape because I was too afraid to. Preston was the one in the road… I can almost see his face. The way he lit a match, smoked his cigarette, let me strangle him. “Why, though? Why was I here to begin with? And why are they trying to keep all of this hidden?”

That is the million dollar question.

“You know why,” I say, stopping in front of a door, my fingers brushing the pocket of my pants where I keep the key I found, and thankfully it’s still there. Room 14. My Room 14, where I lived, day to day, for two years. God, I can practically hear the screams… smell the tranquilizers… feel the pain… “This wasn’t a normal mental institution, was it?” I ask, pressing my hand to the door as I take out the key. As my mind flashes back, I swear the steel burns my hand and I jerk back. “This was something different.”

Do you really want to know? What they did to you? What you are?

My hand trembles as I turn the key and it unlocks. With a deep breath, I push it open, and a wave of emotions hit me. Written all over the charred walls are Lily, Maddie, Lily, Maddie. Help me. Help me. Help me get out of here. Over and over again. God, how I hated this door, when it was shut and when it was opened too.

“Yes, I do. I want to know now. I’m ready.”

Then let me show you.

Maddie

Finding out the truth is painful, but not as painful as it probably would be if I didn’t let Lily be a part of it, let her show me instead of discovering for myself. As I read over the papers, she had shoved under the bed the night she dyed my hair, I let her partially control me, half in control over my emotions so it’s not quite as excruciating. I think I’ve done this many times before—let her take some of my emotional pain like this.

I haven’t showered since I left the forest. I’m tired, filthy, I had to hitchhike home which ended up being over two hours away. I should clean myself up, get rid of the evidence that will link me to the body, but there’s worse evidence right in front of me. Preston’s files. Lily stole the file that night I passed out, after Preston tranquilized me. Apparently he did that a lot in my past, at least according to my notes. It’s why I had the rufi’s in my system that night. He’d given them to me during a “session” to try and subdue the rage inside me and then made a note about it.

His notes are actually pretty straight forward. I was admitted to the hospital when I was fourteen because I beat up my mother during a very heated argument in a fit of rage, which apparently happened a lot due to childhood trauma. It was my mother who had me admitted, not wanting to get the cops involved, so she took me to the institution which I’m still not sure was a legal place of practice. Guessing by the methods, I’d say no. Shock treatment. Questionable medication. There’s some note about some sort of torture treatment Preston did because he believed that when I felt like I was being bad or around bad, I’d run to Lily, my alter ego. Being her was a mechanism I established during my traumatized childhood of being locked up in a basement for three and a half years, from the ages of around nine to thirteen. But there was more to it than that. Whenever I did anything bad, I would become her, because apparently I couldn’t bear to think of myself as bad. Preston had believed that this had something to due with what happened to me while I was kidnapped, that my capturers were on some sort of mission to rid the bad from the world and that they were trying to teach me and so I created Lily to carry the guilt and put blame on her for whenever I did something bad. The worst part, my capture was Markels Wellfordton.

My father.

There’s a picture in the file of him that matches the picture that I burned. I think I’d know who he was even then. The man who beat me, made me watch horrible things, told me I was bad, who gave me buttons to play with while I was locked up. And the man who I hallucinate about all the time whenever I hear the word whore, something my mom and Preston know about and are still trying to cure with hypnotherapy.

I’m about to read another page, but freeze when I hear a door open from inside the house, footsteps, then comes a knock on my door. “Maddie, are you in there?”

The alarm was off when I came back. I could hear the television on so I knew she was home. She didn’t even leave her room when I walked into the house earlier. I was kind of hoping she’d stay in there while I read over all these papers and got as much information as I can. “Go away,” I say.

I hear her try the doorknob, but I locked the door. “Listen, we really need to talk… I thought maybe we could go to Preston’s office and have sort of a group meeting.”

“Why? So he can drug me again?” I call back, reaching for another paper.

Silence.

I don’t think she’s left, though, but I ignore her, going back to the papers. Evidently, my mother knew of my alter ego even before she admitted me. In one of the papers she filled out, she stated that I had blackouts for a year where I would become someone else, who I referred to as Lily. That when I was her I was difficult to deal with and that I reminded her so much of my sister that it frightened her.

The longer I read, the angrier I get. Why would my mother let them do some of the stuff they did to me? Why not tell me now about my past? Why I’m not in a mental institution anymore if she clearly still thinks I need help?

Why?

Why?

Why?

“I’m going to make her tell me,” I say, getting to my feet. There are papers everywhere, some that are so professional and with medical terminology that I have no idea what they really say. “I’m not going to let her lie to me anymore.”

You really think she’s going to tell you? Lily laughs at the absurdity. Have you learned nothing?

“I’m going to make her.” I march toward the door, hearing the floorboards squeak on the other side, my mother retreating I’m sure. “Maybe I’ll just be you.” I pull open the door.

My mother is heading back to her room, but turns around as I exit my room. She starts to say something, but then sees something in my eyes and stops herself. Her eyes take a good look at my blond hair and dirty clothes. “What did you do to her?” she finally manages to ask, backing away from me toward the living room.

“With who?” I match her steps. Could I hurt my own mother if she pushes me that far? Could I hurt her like I did Sydney and the guy in the woods? All the evidence says yes, but the idea of actually doing it makes me feel sick to my stomach.

“With my daughter?” my mother stammers as she bumps into the chair. “With my Maddie.”

“Oh you think I’m Lily,” I say and her face whitens like she’s seen a ghost. I stop just short of her, arms folded, head tipped to the side. “Nope. No Lily here. Just your daughter Maddie. Although, technically Lily was your daughter once too, for quite a few years.” I lean the slightest bit forward to get in her face. “But who I’d really like to talk about right now is my father.”

She instantly shakes her head, hurrying around the chair so it’s between us. “No you don’t, Maddie. It’s for your own good that you never remember him.”

“How about Beleview Mental Institution? Should I remember that?” I ask. She’s silent, taking in raspy breaths as I continue. “No. Okay then. How about my traumatized childhood? Because Preston kept a lot of notes about that.” I cross my arms and watch her closely. “I’m guessing it has to do with my father and what he did to me.”

We stand there in the living room for what feels like an eternity but I’m guessing it’s only a few minutes. The clock on the wall ticks and ticks and ticks and finally she says, “How long have you been able to remember?” She sounds choked.

“A while,” I lie. If she thinks I know, then she’s less likely to lie herself. I hope.

The images of being forced to do things against my will by my father flood my head, how he believed the bad needed to punished, how he told me I was bad, how he told my sister and the boy in the basement the same thing. Then there’s the voice of the woman in the background and I can only pray that it wasn’t my mother—that she didn’t know what was going on… I feel like I’m going to throw up. “Why have you been keeping so much from me?”

“Because.” She shakes her head several times, growing frustrated. “You forgetting… it was like a clean slate for you. An opportunity to start over. You were such a wreck when you came out of the cabin. Even though you were alive, it was like you died… and then you took on the identity of Lily and it made things even worse. I thought with the amnesia that you could start over and be Maddie again… and I think part of you wanted to too—that maybe that’s why you got amnesia in the first place.”

“That’s not what happened.” But I’m not so sure about that. Part of me right now would love to forget that Lily exists inside me and where she came from.

I point my finger at myself. “Do you really think that losing some of my memories would heal me? That it’d make everything that happened not exist anymore?”

Tears dot the corners of her eyes as she stares out the window. “It seemed to be working for a while... you forgetting… and you were finally my Maddie again. The good daughter you were, before all this stuff happened… You were always the good one…” She sinks down on the arm of the chair, still not looking at me, and I wonder what the fuck she’s talking about. I was the good one? Then who was the bad one? My sister? “When Preston found you in the road that night… after you escaped the mental institution, he thought maybe we could look at it as a clean slate for you… thought if you forgot the timeframe when… when all the stuff happened and just remember the good parts, like when you were a little girl… like in those photos I put up all over your wall…” She twists a strand of her hair around her finger, dazing off. “That maybe you could just be the little girl who used to play and have fun and smile. Who didn’t talk to herself, who didn’t have to remember all that horrible stuff that happened in that place… who had violent outbursts like her… God, you acted so much like her toward the end… So we… we did things that were… questionable.” She can’t even look at me.