Sunday, April 10, 1887

“Would you like to die? I’m sure one of me can make that happen.” Angelina smiled sweetly, her dimples showing, and Isabella watched her friend flutter her eyes closed, her tiny hands splaying open against the worn gray cloth of her skirts.

From behind Angelina a mist began to rise, at first thin and nearly invisible, like the steam from a teakettle. But gradually they could all see the form of a man begin to take shape against the dark red wallpaper, partially obscuring the row of mounted deer heads with their lifeless glass eyes. The apparition was a massive brute, thick arms bulging in his collarless shirt, nose broken from a lifetime of battles. “I think I’d like to kill this ‘un,” he growled, becoming more corporeal with each step he lurched forward towards the Doctor.

“Stop them!” Dr. Wittmann bellowed. The two orderlies hesitated for a fraction of a second, then started forward, pulling leather-wrapped truncheons from their belts. Isabella gripped the tiny silver charm around her neck, clutching it so hard the tiny points of silver drew blood and the men were yanked back like dogs on leashes and the nurse, the one with iron keys and pinching fingers, was slammed against the wall by an invisible hand.

Still the doctor refused to see the truth, even as it was taking shape in front of him. “I will not be abused by hysterical women!” he yelled, yanking open his desk drawer and pulling out a revolver.

Isabella calmly stared into the unblinking eye of the gun as she gripped the charm her mother had given her, relishing the bite of the metal into her skin, the blood leaking from between her fingers. “Dr. Wittmann, I think we need to have a conversation about your attitude.”

Saturday, April 9, 1887

Isabella watched the nurse, the one with keys that rattled like bones, pause in her circuit of the common room to inspect a woman’s embroidery. As she pointed out mistakes with jabs of her finger Isabella leaned nearer to Angelina and said in a low voice, “I have a plan. For escape.”

Angelina kept her blonde head bent over the pillow she had been given to embroider with the motto ‘A Woman’s Beauty Is Silence’. So far she had managed to misspell ‘silence’ three times, and each time wrinkled her forehead in confusion when a nurse pointed out her mistake. “Where would we go?” her friend asked through battered lips, as invisible hands helped her knot the thread into an impossible tangle.

“Does it matter?” Isabella could not bear the thought of the Treatment Room. Not again. “We’ve made sure no sane man would want to marry us.”

Angelina smiled a tiny, secret smile. “I do prefer the insane ones anyway.”

Friday, April 8, 1887

Bruises like purple kisses wrapped around Angelina’s thin wrists, and blood caked her mouth from where she’d bitten her lip. Isabella thought that whatever had been done to her friend might possibly be worse than her own iron chair and the black, icy water.

She wrapped an arm around Angelina as they huddled together on the threadbare sofa in the dimmest corner of the common room. The smell of cabbage hung in the air from dinner, and at a table near the window a woman with graying hair was listlessly pushing the pieces of a jigsaw puzzle around. In scattered armchairs other women were napping, or staring into space and mumbling to themselves. A nurse chatted with a guard near the doorway, occasionally checking the watch pinned to the front of her rusty black dress, anxious to end the day.

“They’re going to accidentally kill us with their treatments,” she whispered to Angelina.

The other girl managed a faint smile with her battered mouth. “It won’t be accidental. Not after I told Herr Doktor Wittmann that if he touched me again I’d shove an embroidered cushion so far up his ass he’d be farting proverbs.” Behind her the ghost-like image of an enormous man grinned evilly and nodded in agreement.

Isabella let out a bark of surprised laughter, but quickly covered her mouth when the nurse turned towards them and frowned. Lowering her lashes and trying to look as drugged and befuddled as their companions she whispered to Angelina, “We’ll get out of here. I’ll find a way.”

Thursday, April 7, 1887

Isabella didn’t question why, after breakfast, they had her change back into the thin white nightgown, why they led her down the cold stone steps into the basement, to a room with a white enamel plaque that read ‘Water Treatments’.

Doctor Wittmann was waiting there, not speaking a word as the male orderlies pushed her down into a chair with strange mechanical attachments and a pool behind it, giant blocks of ice bobbing like tombstones in the black water. Too late she began to struggle and thrash as they tightened the straps, pinning her in place like a butterfly on paper. When she tried to scream they forced a strip of leather into her mouth to silence her, part of her brain laughing wildly that yes, of course, butterflies were silent. 

There was a clattering noise as orderlies turned cranks and abruptly the chair began to shake. The chains that hung from the seat like black snakes lifted up, and as they grew taut the chair itself jerked upward. When she was swinging over the pit of water Dr. Wittmann remarked calmly in his clipped German accent, “Did you know that your forefathers would submerge witches in ponds to test for evil spirits?”

He gave a casual flick of his fingers and the guards began to work the cranks again, slowly lowering her toward the inky water. Dr. Wittmann continued, “Of course, in this modern age we understand that water treatments can be an important aid for cooling an overheated spirit such as yours.”

As her bare feet broke the surface of the freezing water she thrashed, but she continued inexorably downward, the cold like knives driving into her bones. Around her neck the charm burned futilely, kept from her fingers by the straps that bound her.

When the water reached her chin and she was convulsing from the agony of icy pool, her back arched against the restraints, the men paused their cranking. The doctor met her eyes with his pale blue ones and smiled faintly. “Don’t stop, please,” he said to to orderlies. “I do believe our patient would benefit from a full submersion.”

She tried to scream, but all that came out was a moan, and even that was muffled by the strip of leather between her teeth. And then everything was ice and blackness.

Wednesday, April 6, 1877

Three sharp knocks on her door woke her from a nightmare of grasping hands, the smell of strange chemicals, a train where strangers stared and then turned away when her numb lips tried to form words. Now she was in a room she’d never seen before, the cracked plaster walls dimly lit by early morning light.

Isabella struggled to remember as the door was flung open and a woman with a face like a clenched fist strode in. “Get up.”

Isabella stared at the woman’s starched black dress, the heavy iron keys hanging from a ring at her belt. A uniform, perhaps. Then the memories flooded back into her like black, oily water. Frantically she store the sheets away, and saw bruises on her arms and a stained nightgown that wasn’t her own.

The woman tossed a boneyard gray dress onto the bed. “Put this on. Breakfast is in five minutes.”

The gown wasn’t hers, either—where had all her clothes gone? But a lifetime of obedience that was only just beginning to crumble told her to dress herself, and before she could wonder at anything else the woman in black was leading her through a maze of shadowy hallways, until at last they came to a large room with a dining table where perhaps a dozen women were sitting in the mismatched wooden chairs, waiting.

Seeing an empty seat next to a slight girl with a snarled tangle of blonde curls, Isabella slid into it. Most of the other women were sitting silently, staring at their plates, or gazing vacantly out the smeared windows to an empty courtyard where a solitary geranium plant struggled to survive, red-orange petals scattered around it like drops of blood.

The tiny blonde woman, perhaps a little younger than Isabella, leaned over. “I’m Angelina.”

“Isabella.” She noticed that everyone at the table was wearing the same gray outfit, their shapeless dresses hanging listlessly.

Another woman in black—were they nurses?—led them in a prayer that spoke of obedience to their fathers, to their brothers, to their husbands. Serving bowls of gelatinous porridge were slowly passed from hand to hand, and cups of tea were poured by the nurse with the iron keys.

When there was a clatter of spoons and the black-clad nurses retreated the slightly, the pale girl pushed her uneaten porridge away and said, “Why are you here?”

“I...” Isabella faltered. Why was she here? Finally all she could come up with was, “I said ‘no’.”

Angelina gave a tiny nod of understanding. “I let my friends out of my head. My father doesn’t like it when I do that.” She gave a tiny sigh, the slightest puff of air. “Sometimes it’s very hard to keep them in.”

Isabella pushed her own bowl of gluey porridge away and reached for her tea, but Angelina grabbed her hand. For a moment Isabella thought she saw another woman, gray-haired and frowning, behind her as the girl whispered, “Don’t drink that. There’s something in it.”

Isabella looked down at the pale liquid in front of her, then around at the other patients. They placidly sipped from their mismatched teacups, as sedate as if they were visiting in a friend’s parlor, as if nothing in the world was wrong. Quickly she set her cup back onto its saucer, the impact making the surface of the liquid ripple.

Tuesday, April 5, 1877

Her brother was sitting behind the dark wood fortress of his desk, a man in an elegant suit standing beside him.

“Isabella, this is Dr. Ferdinand Wittmann. He runs a private hospital.” 

Isabella froze, her fingers clutching the doorframe, until her brother motioned impatiently at the hard wooden chair in front of his desk. “Sit.” Too late, already in motion, she realized her fiancé was in the other chair, staring stonily ahead, a thin cut like the slice of a razor running down one cheek.

Carefully arranging her skirts as she sat, she glanced from her brother, who was drumming his short, stubby fingers on the desk, to the doctor. Dr. Wittmann coolly returned her gaze, his pale blue eyes boring through her as if her very soul was a open book he could pick up and read whenever he wanted. “Miss Vandenberg,” he said with the faintest clip of German in his voice, “your brother informs me that you were disturbingly emotional with your husband.”

“My fiancé—“ she began.

The doctor cut her off with an impatient slice of his hand. “Fine. Your fiancé.” He paused, staring at her with his glacial eyes, until he appeared satisfied she wouldn’t interrupt him again. “You became hysterical and shouted at him, then threw something and broke an extremely valuable mirror.”

Had she thrown something? No, she was sure she hadn’t. “He was attacking me—“ she tried, but this time her own brother stopped her.

“No, Isabella, you attacked Alfred. I went to great pains to arrange this marriage, and the moment you’re alone with the man who will be your husband you become completely hysterical.”

There was that word again, ‘hysterical’. As her brother droned on about ingratitude, vulgarity, and, of course, hysteria, the doctor strolled around behind her. A part of her mind, the part not listening to the words ‘rehabilitation’ and ‘asylum’, told her to flee, to hide, that a predator was near.

Then a hand snaked around, a piece of cloth clamped down over her nose, and the more she struggled the more the sickly-sweet smell flooded her lungs and dripped into her veins. Some part of her mind made her start to reach for the silver chain around her neck, but it was too late. And the world slipped out of her grasping fingers.

Monday, April 4, 1877

Isabella thrashed, pinned to the sofa by her fiancé’s smothering weight and the carnivore-reek of his breath.

“No,” she gasped, twisted up in the snare of her silk gown, those layers of fabric and lace, of undergarment and corset, that the world claimed were there to protect her.

Alfred didn’t even bother to respond, to point out the fact that she couldn’t buy or own or even rent the word ‘no’. Instead he pawed at her, as if he were an animal and she was another piece of meat, a carcass, for him to tear apart and devour.

In her thrashing her hand snagged in the chain around her neck and found the tiny magnifying glass encircled by silver that hung there. The embossed silver might have shown the face of a saint, but if so it was a saint no church had ever spoken of. An engagement gift from her mother, silently slipped around her neck an hour ago

Isabella clutched the charm with its strangely sharp corners, and one of the tips pricked her thumb. An injury so small she didn’t notice, didn’t realize a drop of blood the size of a grain of sand was welling out as she fought as hard as if she were battling for her life. Although perhaps she was.

Her vision tunneled, then refocused through the prism of the tiny magnifying glass, and she felt as if she could see through time and space and into another world. There were flickering images, strange women who waved and smiled, and other darker things she couldn’t name.

Isabella felt something snap into place.

From over the marble mantelpiece the gilt-edged mirror, a massive piece of glass that was meant to reflect tea trays and silk gowns, satisfied paunches and tumblers of whiskey, plummeted to the carpet. When it shattered into a thousand pieces each shard reflected back Isabella’s wild eyes, her fiancé’s animal snarl. As he jumped back, a thin trickle of blood running down his cheek to bloom red on his snowy collar, Isabella could feel the dark smiles of her invisible women.

Sunday, April 10, 1887

...after...

They wiped their hands clean with stacks of embroidered pillow coverings they found shoved in a cupboard, smearing ‘A Woman’s Joy Is in Her Home’ with streaks of red.

There was no changing their clothes, so they tugged the coats from the limp arms of men who wouldn’t need them anymore. A metal box in the desk had a surprising amount of cash. Angelina didn’t hesitate at all and also grabbed the half-empty bottle of whiskey she found in a bottom drawer, and Isabella slid the comforting weight of the doctor’s pistol into her pocket.

Then the two women—hysterical, insane and unrepentant—opened the French doors that led out to the dark grounds of the asylum and simply walked away