Kicked Out! (of the mental)

I got kicked out of the mental.

It’s true! As much as I liked it there compared to the pen, I just could not keep out of trouble for long, and soon was sent back to the pen with new break & enter, theft and assault charges against me.

It all happened out of the blue: There was an office with a locked door, and I thought I could get through it. I did. Once inside I found vials and vials of clear, liquid drugs and plenty of syringes to go with it. I could have stopped, turned around and gone back out the door. I had proved my point – I got through the door, using nothing more than a playing card and the tooth from a plastic fork – and the right thing to do now – no, the smart thing to do – was to leave everything as I found it. Close the door and go sit down like it had never happened.

But there were vials of drugs. Lots of them!

I proceeded to fill my pockets with vials and syringes, looking for pills but not finding any. I had no idea what I was taking or if I could even get high from any of it, but I was determined to find out.

Soon I was filling syringes with liquid, reading the bottle label, and jabbing needles into myself. If the bottle read ‘IV’ I found a vein in my arm to inject into. If it said ‘IM’ I stuck it into my hip. I would inject and wait… and after a few minutes if I didn’t feel anything, didn’t catch a buzz, I would go on to the next bottle. I couldn’t pronounce any of the names on the bottles, and by the time I had injected three or four without getting high, I was beginning to think it had all been for nothing.

And it was. I shot up every kind I had at least once and didn’t get high at all.

I am not sure how or why I came to tell Kenny about the drugs. He may have seen me break into the office, I am not sure. However, once he knew I was shooting up, he wanted in on the madness.

Now Kenny was crazy. Not shock-treatment crazy, but close. He had been in the pen a few times while I was there, and there were definitely a few screws loose in his construction. He was a nice enough guy, and I had always thought that he was solid. Never did I think he would rat me out. So I started sticking needles into him because he would not take no for an answer. IV – in the arm. IM – in the hip. I knew by now there was no chance that either of us was going to get high and wondered a little about just what I was putting into us. I shook that off quickly though. If there were going to be any bad reactions from any of it, I would have already experienced them.

That evening Kenny started freaking out. I walked around the corner just in time to see the orderlies pinning him to the ground while he screamed “I need a shot! I need a shot!”

“Yes Kenny! The doctor will be here in a minute and he will give you a shot.” They assured him.

“No! no! I want some of the stuff that Barry gave me! I want the stuff Barry gave me!” Kenny screamed.

I was shocked. I walked away wondering how to get out of this one. How could he? Well, that was easy – he was crazy. How could I have trusted a nutbar? Maybe I was crazy too.

Before long the unit was full of cops and I knew they had me. There were at least four people in that room when I decided the door to the office should be open, and they were all there when I came out as well. I was, to put it simply, screwed.

None of the people who had seen me break into the office lived by “The Code”, or, with the exception of Kenny, had any time in the pen under their belts that I was aware of. So they didn’t think twice about writing statements, smiling as they did so, excitedly telling the police how much fun they’d had watching me get though the door and into that room.

Again, I was screwed.

As I waited to be put in cuffs, or at least TQ (temporary quiet, if I remember correctly) I began to get angry. Kenny knew better! He’d done enough time in the pen to know to keep his mouth shut! Then another thought jumped to the head of the line: What would they say back in the pen if I didn’t make him pay for ratting me out? That would not be good for me at all.

I knew they were likely going to charge me with Break & Enter, theft, and whatever else they could come up with, but I knew it had to be more than that. I had to add assault to the list before I went back to the pen. Crazy or not, I had to do something about what Kenny had done. It made me sick as I thought about it, and yet I could not let him get away with it and then go back to the pen…

And so it was. Soon I was in TQ pacing around the small, padded-walled cell, wondering just what the hell I was. Kenny hadn’t had a chance and when he didn’t fight back I became angry, enraged, and kicked him in the forehead with my heel while he was down. Three or four punches and two kicks to the head, all the while hissing “You fucking rat!”. “If you open your mouth about this and I get charged, I will kill you. Remember that!” Then I walked into the TV room and waited to be grabbed by the orderlies.

It was not a long wait.

I didn’t get a straight jacket, but did have to stand with my hands on the far wall when they brought me food, and the room had a bubble window, where the staff could poke their head in and see every inch of it. I paced and punched walls and paced some more. I was so pumped up with adrenaline that I added push ups to the mix just to try to calm down. I didn’t want to go back to the pen. This had been by far the best place I had ever done time, and yet I screwed it up.