Trial Run

“Everyone, please, let’s welcome Clarissa to our group.”

The falseness is clear in Dr. Benning’s voice. He doesn’t give a shit if I feel welcomed or not. I’m here. It’s part of my treatment. I don’t have a say in the matter. I don’t get to leave if I feel uncomfortable. He’s going through the motions, playing along, and I might as well do the same.

“Hello.”

I raise one of my hands from my lap, offer a tentative wave to the others. We’re all dressed the same—in scratchy, dull gray pajamas—except for Dr. Benning, of course. He’s wearing a dark suit and a featureless white mask. The faces of the group members are exposed for everyone to see. It’s part of the treatment plan, I suppose.

“Why’s she here?” The guy sitting directly across the circle of folding chairs and broken patients eyes me. His eyes are haunted. He’s seen terrible things. “What did she do?”

“Clarissa,” Dr. Benning says, “would you like to tell us about your experiences?”

“No.” I look at my hands. They’re pale. The cuts have almost healed. “Not particularly.”

A young woman, barely out of her teens, snorts at my answer.

Another patient, a balding man wearing taped up glasses that sit crookedly on his nose, taps his fingers against his thighs nervously. “Ask her who she killed,” he says. “She’s got that look about her. She killed someone. And it wasn’t clean, either. It was messy and bloody and—”

“That’s enough,” Dr. Benning says.

Now, the other members of the group are interested. All eyes are on me.

“He’s right,” I say. “That’s why I’m here.”

“Big deal,” the snorting young woman says. “We’ve all done that and worse.”

“I can tell,” the balding man says again, only this time he’s muttering to himself as much as anyone.

“We’re all here to talk about the things we’ve done,” the young woman says, “like that’s supposed to help us get over it or something. You don’t get over what I did. I chopped my roommate up into little pieces. I had to do it. She came home from the gym, and she had all these sweaty little mouths all over her body. And those mouths were whispering to me. They said such awful things.”

“I ran over a guy in the Wal-Mart parking lot.” The man with haunted eyes speaks next. “Only, it wasn’t a guy. It was more like a mass of eels, all squirming together and pretending to be a person. I crushed them under my tires. But when I got out to check, it had turned back into a human being.”

“My wife was praying to a god in the garbage disposal,” the balding man says.

“My stepfather was turning into a spider,” another young woman adds.

“I killed my pastor,” the last member of the group—a kid with a preppy hair cut— says. “The book he was reading from wasn’t the Bible. He was trying to poison the congregation. He wanted to poison their minds.”

I look at the others.

I look at the expressionless masked face of the doctor.

“What am I supposed to say?” I ask. “After hearing that, what am I supposed to add? I don’t belong here after all. I thought maybe I did, but they’re all—“

“They’re not,” the doctor says.

“The things they’re describing, can’t possibly be true.”

“They are.”

“We’re here,” the young woman who chopped her roommate into pieces says, “because they’re trying to keep us quiet.”

“That’s where you come in, Clarissa.” The masked doctor rises. He crosses the circle of chairs, and looms over me. He leans in close, the porcelain lips brushing my ear as he whispers. “There’s a knife taped to the bottom of your chair.”

My heart races. My breath catches in my throat. My voice drops to a whisper instinctively.

“A knife?”

I glance at the doctor. His eyes, staring out from behind the mask, are wide and frightened.

“Once you’re done,” he says, “you’ll have a mask of your own waiting for you.”

He straightens and walks stiffly from the room. His shoes click on the tiled floor. He taps on the metal door. It screeches open and closed again.

“What did he say to you?” The balding man asks.

“This,” I say, “is a place of new beginnings.”

I reach under the chair.