Fred is Lost

The curving and unknown back roads are enough to make me clutch tightly to the sedan's door handle. I’ve always been a nervous traveler, but now, with each passing moment, the snow, which started as a gentle and beautiful backdrop, is falling heavily, making it difficult to see much of anything. As excited as I am to be taken on a mysterious romantic weekend, the travel conditions are making me wish that we just stayed home.

I’m doing my best to hide my discomfort from Fred. It was a rare thing for him to be romantic, and I don’t want to spoil his fun by being visibly miserable. I also don’t want to distract him from focusing on the potentially deadly roads. So I stare out the window and try desperately to focus on the beauty of the white-blanketed pines, taking several deep breaths to settle my nerves.

“Don’t worry, honey,” Fred says with a chuckle, placing a hand on my leg. “We are almost there.”

Forcing a smile, I am annoyed that he can tell I am nervous, but also not surprised after twenty years of marriage. “I wish you’d say where you are taking me. I hope I have packed appropriately.”

“You will know soon enough,” Fred says, “I’m sure whatever you packed will be fine.”

Nodding, I turn back toward the window. We ride in silence, and several minutes pass before Fred starts tapping rapidly on the steering wheel, a show of stress that he never had before returning from the war.

“Is everything okay, dear?” I ask.

“Oh, um, yep,” Fred says unconvincingly. “But I think I may have missed our turn. I see a building up ahead. I’ll go in there and ask them for directions.”

I laugh. “Since when are you one to ask anyone for directions?”

But Fred doesn’t react, which I find unsettling as he slowly turns off the main road and starts up a long, inclined driveway. Leaning forward, I try to get a look at the building he is planning to stop at. It is a gigantic stone building at the top of the hill, and my eyes stretch wide, having never seen a structure so huge before.

“What is this place?” I ask, taking in the monstrous façade.

“I don’t know,” Fred says. “Might be some kind of fancy Hotel or something. Surely someone inside will be able to point me in the right direction. I’m going to pull up to the front door, but I’ll leave the car running so you can stay warm. Shouldn’t be more than a minute.”

The closer we get to the front door, the hotter the fire in my stomach becomes. There is a dark energy running through me, a sense of dread that has settled into my throat. As Fred stops in front of the large stone steps leading to the front double doors, the cause of my discomfort becomes clear.

“Look, Fred,” I say, pointing to a large metal placard on the right side of the entrance. “Penderton Asylum, Established 1880.”

“Oh, that’s neat,” he says nonchalantly as he opens the door. A cold blast of air floods into the car, sending a chill through my bones.

Fred is wrong. A place like this makes me sad. “Oh, Fred, there’s nothing neat about it. Those poor, feeble-minded people are forgotten and locked away in there.”

But he shrugs, exits the car, and shuts the door without answering, leaving me alone with my thoughts. In need of distraction from the depressive location, I shuffle through my handbag, retrieving a mirror compact and lipstick. “Might as well freshen up,” I mumble to myself.

Applying my bright red lipstick perfectly, just as I have had done a thousand times before, I fight to ignore the tiny wrinkles that had appeared slowly on my lip line over the last few years. I have always prided myself on being well-kept in my appearance and think I look more like a woman in my late thirties than the forty-two-year-old I am.

Without warning, my car door flies open, and thick, strong arms clutch around my shoulders, pulling at me violently. My eyes pop with bursts of light as my head smashes into the door frame. A scream is stuck in my throat, and my chest pounds in terror as they yank me out of the car and onto the snow.

I can’t catch my breath, and I am flailing my arms and legs wildly, fighting for escape, as my purse flies into the air and onto the ground, its contents spilling out.

“This is a mistake,” I shout, as my eyes plead with the two giant male assailants. I continue struggling, desperate to get out of their grasp. “We’ve only come to ask for directions. Please! Find my husband. He will clear this up.”

My eyes scan frantically for Fred. I need him to tell them what a horrible mistake they are making.

Out of the corner of my eye, I see Fred approach, and relief floods me. But I’m suddenly confused to see he is walking alongside another man, who is holding a clipboard and smiling oddly. I scream out for Fred again, my throat now burning from the strain, but he doesn’t look at me. He’s pretending he can’t hear me and keeping his eyes planted on the ground in front of him.

“Fred, look at me,” I beg. “You need to tell them that they are making a mistake.”

The man with the clipboard nods at one of the men holding me down, and a new panic rushes through me as a yellow fluid-filled syringe appears in his hand. “Don’t worry, Mr. Davidson. We will take good care of your wife.”

Attempting to wiggle away from the men again, I realize that it’s no use. He plunges the needle into my upper arm, and a burning sensation spreads down and through my chest. My body becomes heavy and limp as I begin to fade.

“Fred,” I mumbled. “How could you…”

My vision is growing dark. Watching Fred shake the strange man’s hand and then walk to the car without looking back at me, a flood of desperation envelopes me as I slip further into darkness. I sob silently inside my mind, blindsided by this ultimate act of betrayal, and as I start to slip in and out of consciousness, everything starts making sense.

“It’s about the money, isn’t it?” I say, in a garbled, drawn-out voice, surprised when Fred stops and finally makes eye contact with me. I am slipping away.

“I'm sorry, Rose,” he says, but it is muffled and distant, as blackness finally wins over the last of my sight.

I don’t want to slip away completely. I want to fight, but can’t move or see, and my ears are swooshing with every heartbeat. I can feel myself being lifted off the ground and carried up the stairs.

The last thing I hear as the relative warmth of the building greets my limp body is the clipboard man’s voice as he leans in close, his breath hot and smelling of stale coffee and cigarettes. “Patient Davidson, I am Doctor Klaus Brenner. Welcome to Penderton Asylum.”

And with that, I succumb to my new world of endless nightmares.