Crazy Enough Read Online Free PDF

somewhere in hell. For purposes of describing this particular institution without incurring any potential legal ramifications, or conjuring any demons from its ashes, we’ll call the place “Satan’s Anal Deluge-Ville,” Sadville for short.
    Sadville was a mental institution that looked exactly like you would expect a loony bin to look like had you only seen them depicted in horror films: a monolithic, gulag-type building with walls the color of yellowing chicken bone. The kind of place where, as a kid, you’d stare up at its horribleness from your tiny spot of sunshine, and you’dswear you saw thunder clouds gathering and a flock of screeching black crows or bats flapping around it.
    There was no ping-pong at Sadville.
    I remember one particular visit from when I was nine or ten, and still into visiting Mom wherever she was because I missed her so much. Dad was having a meeting with one of Mom’s doctors, or, for all we knew, having another fight over whether he had paid the bill. Either way, I’m pretty sure he was happy to miss the mess his wife was in at the moment. We were closing in on 1980, the beginning of a terrible time for Mom. There was no better evidence of how hopeless the situation was with her than when she was at Sadville. When Mom was in that hole, things were not good. The place had hardcore security (read: lockdown), as it was home for the dangerous lunatics who were generally called criminally insane . There were thick, scary doors and gigantic nurses with big arms that looked like big legs. Their even bigger legs were stuck into itchy white tights and stomped around under their square asses, barely shifting under the white uniforms. Like blocky, scowling ships, they swept through the wards, checking straps and giving Thorazine enemas.
    The supercrazies were either holed up in the never-get-out ward, or doped up within an inch of their lives in the drooling-medicated-coma ward. Mom was in another section of the hospital, where patients were free to bump into things, rage maniacally at shadows, or stare blankly at the blaring television. Let’s call it the seriously-deranged-but-not-terribly-dangerous ward or, simply, the Unwanted Relative Area.
    We had to sign in at the front desk and wait to be escorted to Mom’s floor. One of the linebacker-shaped nurses would appear like Lurch from The Addams Family, and we would follow her into the elevator and up to the proper floor. The nurse never spoke. She lookedlike she could flip over a car and eat the passengers, so we never spoke to her either. Once on Mom’s floor, Nursezilla would haul open three massive, medieval iron locks, then pull open the thick metal door with a ka-chunk ! Out would waft the scents of stale cigarette smoke and old coffee stink. The industrial fluorescent lighting gave a constant bug-light buzzing, the television was blaring, and there was someone screaming from a locked room.
    The door opened to a long, straight hallway with patient rooms all along it. Immediately on the left was the small TV room. In the hallway were slumped a few catatonic bodies, someone in a broken wheelchair, someone leaning on the wall drawing with her finger, someone else stood swaying in the center of the hallway. I noticed her staring hard at us as we came in.
    She was very thin, but looked like she had been pretty once, with high cheekbones and wide-set eyes. Her hair was a teased blonde-gray mass that would have pouffed around her head like a wiry cloud had she not woven it into two rough braids on either side of her head with childish bows at the end. “Helga the whore” said my brain. She stood in the hallway, staring slack-jawed until she saw my brother John, when she sprang to life hopping like a toddler into a room with a squeak.
    â€œShe has sex prawblums,” spat a fat, wall-eyed woman in front of the television.
    â€œHi, Mom!” I said, and went into the common room to give her a hug. Mom