Free Alice & Dorothy by Jw Schnarr

times, like now, it was all she could do to keep from screaming and pulling all her hair out. People kept saying it, but it wasn’t true. She wasn’t crazy. She had her own mind. What would the tin man or the scarecrow say if they could see me now?
     
    What was it the wizard had said to her? Home is where you make it. She tried to keep that in mind as she went about her day to day rituals in the nuthouse; mainly this consisted of watching out the windows for shifting weather patterns and taking her pills three times a day as ordered. Since she was not considered a flight risk, she was allowed to leave the floor and walk around if she wanted to get out for a bit; the nurses had to unlock the elevator in order to use it though, and after five o’clock the elevator shut down for public use and she was supposed to stay upstairs. Sometimes she went downstairs to be around other people, but there was so much misery on the other wards that this floor could be the calmest place in the building.
     
    Of course, there was one thing she had to fight off the most terrible days, when the gloom of the hospital was too much or she was so bored she needed a pick-me-up; Aunt Em had sent along fifty dollars for ice cream. In case you get a case of the nimbly bimbly’s , she’d whispered, stuffing the folded bill into her hand. Dorothy had accepted it gladly. Her life was nothing but nimbly’s and bimbly’s , often more of each than she could count.
     
    Not knowing how long she might be in this place, Dorothy was very careful with how and when she spent that money. She saved it for those days when she was ready to claw out her eyes at the sight of another personality test, or slash open her wrists so the nurses taking blood could just take it all at once and get it over with. Some days, it seemed both were an imminent possibility. Then she’d grab two dollars, tell the nurse she was going to the cafeteria, and make her way down to the ice cream machine just outside the lunchroom.
     
    There was a bench with a water fountain nearby, and some silk plants meant to relieve stress. Dorothy found it the perfect place to sit and be still and push all her bad thoughts away. Sometimes she would think about her life in Oz, sometimes not.
     
    Sometimes she sat and thought about just walking out the door. Like her Aunt Em used to say, Dorothy weren’t no caged bird . She was meant to fly. She was meant to sing. But like most songbirds that spent a long time in their cages, she wasn’t so sure she could survive out there on her own anymore. She had a feeling her wings had atrophied beyond usefulness and were now just there to hold up her clothes. Anything resembling a killer instinct had been cowed by the drugs she was taking and the security blanket hospitality of the hospital. That, and well...she’d never been a killer had she? They were accidents.
     
    So she’d fold her ice cream wrapper carefully so as not to get ice cream on her fingers, place it in the garbage, scoop up Toto and have a drink of water to get the ice cream milk off her teeth. By the time she got back upstairs she’d be smiling again. Just in time for more tests. Or more blood work.
     
    “You take care, kiddo,” one of the security guards said to Alice. Dorothy turned back to the nurses’ station. They were getting ready to leave. The one standing to the left of Alice looked over at Dorothy and flashed her a predatory smile.
     
    Dorothy could feel his eyes licking her skin. She pulled back from the edge of the couch. He smirked at her. His eyes moved down from Dorothy’s face. To where her chest would be, if he could see through the back of the couch. Back up to her face. Into her eyes…
     
    Alice saw the look and followed it down to Dorothy.
     
    Dorothy’s face burned. For a moment there were two sets of eyes on her, burning holes through her clothes and dancing on naked flesh. Then the blond girl looked over at the security guard and snickered.
     
    “See