Free The Edge of Madness Cafe (The Sea and the Wasteland Book 2) by Mark Reynolds

why he kept them.
It was strictly professional.
    Of late, he had developed
a fondness for an angelfish, though. The reason why remained a mystery, but a
good psychiatrist understands there are matters beyond his ken.
    Ellen, for instance, had
lost her mind.
    He did not use the
expression carelessly, not some exaggerated hyperbole. She had, in a very real
sense, lost her mind. More aptly, she had locked a part of it away, closed the
door and discarded the key. There was a past there, of course. Any speculation
to the contrary was nonsense. But for one reason or another, she had closed
that entire past off and started over as if she were a character in a book, her
life beginning with page one and going forward from there, her past only an
assumption without any basis in fact. Nonsense . Likely trauma induced, one
too many times being revived in an ER. One too many times riding down her highs
in county lock-up. And most recently, killing her would-be rapist in a drugged
stupor before passing out. The police found her, half-naked and unconscious
beside his dead body. Later in the hospital, a misguided regimen by his
esteemed—amend that to bungling—colleague, Dr. Samuel Chaulmers, not only
reinforced her withdrawal from reality, but supplanted her past entirely with a
delusional fantasy world. Gabriel Monroe brought her to him upon her conditional
release because the only thing more damaging politically than a mentally ill,
drug-addicted family member was hiding that mentally ill, drug-addicted family
member away in an asylum.
    The doctor crossed back
to the window, looked out. The sidewalk in front of the bus stop was still
empty.
    To be fair, Chaulmers was
not a complete imbecile; he was just old school. He diagnosed Ellen’s habitual
use of hallucinogens as a sign of depression, and saw her lack of response to
his own regimen of prescribed medication as a call for something stronger,
something more persuasive. Electro-convulsive shock therapy fit the bill
nicely. Short-term memory loss was a side-effect, no question; but never
long-term. And it should not have induced delusions, her stories of another
world, of Jack O. Lantern and the strange cast of fairytale creatures and
fractured personalities. Chaulmers’s treatment had sent her true reality deep
into hiding, leaving this facsimile behind as a coping mechanism.
    Well, he liked a
challenge. The world had damaged Ellen Monroe. Intentions aside, Chaulmers
managed only to break her a little more. It was now left to him to pick up the
pieces and put them back together.
    On his
desk, a single picture in a cheap department store frame sat turned away from
his patients. It was the only one that faced him when he was at his desk. A
young girl, early teens, standing in front of a young man in a cap and gown.
His arm is draped around her neck, a little playful, a little protective. Both
are smiling. His high school graduation, the girl his cousin, Catherine; everyone
called her Cassie.
    The picture caught his
eye as he looked back from the empty window view, the barren sidewalk— where
was the bus, anyway? There was something about it, something familiar, déjà
vu . Until eight weeks ago, he hadn’t looked at the picture in years. Now it
occupied his desk, his attention, his thoughts. Cassie’s eyes, even then,
looked far away, even lost.
    Then, out of the corner
of his eye, he saw the bulk of the city bus approaching, heard the rumble of
the diesel engine, and let his misgivings slip away unattended.
    Because that’s what you
do with things you don’t want to remember: you bury them, and try like hell to
forget.

 
     
     
     
     
     
     
JUBJUB BIRD
     
     
    Jasper Desmond was
preparing to fly.
    He knew he couldn’t really fly; he wasn’t stupid. He didn’t have wings like planes or birds had wings, so he
couldn’t fly. No wings, no feathers, no tail meant you couldn’t fly. Jasper
Desmond wasn’t stupid. Gramma said so, and Gramma was never wrong.
    Gramma also