Free He Wanted the Moon by Mimi Baird, Eve Claxton

around were stands accommodating hundreds of thousands of people (or perhaps souls, because I could not actually see that which I imagined.)
    The events of my past life took on new meaning. I could see myself as a hero in every fiction tale I’d ever read: Count of Monte Cristo, Three Musketeers, and so many others. Suddenly I was Houdini, The Count, and a hundred other legendary characters. I grew more and more ill in a world overgrown with delusions.
    I spent much time watching the birds, robins, grackles, and sparrows playing around on the grass and in the trees. One day, an attendant came out of one of the buildings and threw some bread out for the birds. I imagined that my own love for the birds had influenced the gesture. I whistled for the birds, talking to them in their language. They were always easily coaxed to the place near where I stood to whistle to them. I had many delusions but no hallucinations: I saw and heard only what was actually there.
    Mr. Burns came walking down from the administration building. I imagined a crescendo of laughter and applause from the unseen and unheard galleries above me. I watched him closely as he strode along across the grass. He walked all the way around the three walls of the porch and climbed the fire-escape stairs to the upper floor. I followed him along, talking to him and teasing him. He looked larger than usual, his face broader, whiter. His fat, white uniformed body seemed to have increased enormously in size.
    Mr. Burns said, “Would you like to go back upstairs for a while?”
    A delusion took hold: perhaps they were closing the upstairs on account of some impending catastrophe, and maybe they wanted me to go back to be sure that my own room was about as I left it for future historians to study.
    I went with Mr. Burns; we walked upstairs. The soles of my feet were becoming so sensitive that I could hardly stand on them. I moved along slowly and quietly, down the corridor to my room. Mr. Burns stayed behind. There were no patients anywhere. I went into the closet and rearranged the slippers, towels and bathrobe, putting everything neatly in order. I went into my room and looked around. I laid one end of a towel on the window and closed it, leaving the towel hanging down. I took down the shade and rolled it up, thinking of it as sensitized photograph paper that held some type of record. I put this beneath the mattress, running it beneath some of the links in the steel bedsprings, thus fastening it down. I rearranged the bed clothing and turned to leave the room. An attendant came and locked me in. I was deeply shocked. I sat down.
    A little while later, I was let out and wandered around, finding that all the patients had reappeared. Perception of color became more intense. The lips of most of the patients looked intensely red, unnaturally so, as if they had on a coating of very dark lipstick. I walked around saying nothing, doing nothing, bewildered. An attendant came and took me to my room. I was placed in a straightjacket: The shock to my sensibilities was profound and painful. Thisstraightjacket was new; fresh canvas made specially to fit me. It would have been extremely difficult to get out of it. I made no attempt. What bothered me was not the mechanical excellence of the straightjacket and the difficulty of getting out of it, but the utterly incomprehensible puzzle of why I was put in it when I was doing nothing but cooperating to the best of my ability, fully and completely.
    The hall clock must have stopped running, or if it didn’t I was no longer able to hear its ticking. Everywhere there seemed to be a ghastly silence. On the porch I could see many patients familiar to me, but I could not hear them talking or walking. They were all moving around incessantly but soundlessly. My north window was partly open, but no fresh air came through, and I heard no sounds from the road below.
    My imagination took on the speed of light. I thought that the entire Westborough