Melissa had taken the time to look at herself in the tiny, unbreakable mirror provided. It seemed like a good time for a self-evaluation, or at least it was as good a way to while away a few minutes as any other. Certainly, she couldn’t do much of anything else, since she had been locked into this tiny cell in the crazy house.
There was nothing to do but wait. Apparently, they were going to do something with her, since they had taken her out of the general population of miserable, destitute, and crazy women and put her in here. But what? She doubted that they were going to use her sexually, not that she would have cared, but nobody had wanted her that way for some time. Maybe they were going to kill her? Or let her die? Or, and this might be the worst yet, kick her out.
Outside, for Melissa, was worse than anything she had ever known. Madness had become the norm. Whatever protection that families had once given women and children was gone now. The children died first from the diseased and polluted water. The women who survived at all did it at the mercy of stronger males who used and abused them in myriad and eternally creative ways, until they were ready to die. A few women, some of the most fortunate ones, ended up in the few social institutions remaining, like the crazy house where lucky Melissa had lived in squalor for the past few days.
“Please don’t let them kick me out!”
Melissa studied her gaunt eyes in the dull mirror. The drooping lids and drug-worn glaze disguised even their color. She could see enough of her eyes to know that they were tormented and, well, crazy.
Could she have ever been pretty? The mirror wouldn’t say. It would say, however, that she was ruined. The corners of her eyes sagged down toward her sagging cheeks bridged, at last, by her sagging mouth and chin.
She might have been pretty, maybe, she thought. She might have been young.
If she hadn’t been crazy.
If she hadn’t been a drug addict.
If she hadn’t been a whore.