Graymere

While the rest of my group went to see the royal society in London, I made my way to Berkshire to pay a visit to my good friends in the Broadmoor Criminal Lunatic asylum.

Now to be a good spy, you have to be good at pretending to be someone else (it’s a running joke that agents spend so much time pretending to be other people that they themselves do not exist). Currently, I was Annabelle Charleston, the wife of a wealthy nobleman who was considering making a large donation. When there’s money on the line, people will do pretty much anything to get it. In addition to that, around my neck hung a crystal of synthesized astatine isotope which sent out a series of pulses that interfered with certain types of brain waves, basically making it difficult, if not impossible to lie. As an agent, I was in theory trained to overcome its effects, but even I found it difficult to say anything about being Annabelle Charleston after I turned it on.

The man currently giving me a tour of the asylum was named Mark Scheme, though he insisted I call him Mark. He rattled off some facts about how Broadmoor built to a design by Sir Joshua Jebb, how the first patient was admitted in 1862 for clinical lycanthropy, having murdered small animals and later children under the delusion that he was a werewolf.

I frowned in confusion. That wasn’t right. The first patient had been a woman, a woman who murdered her infant child. And she was admitted in 1863, not 1862. There was something strange going on here.

Mark continued to explain how the asylum was not only beneficial, but needed for society to function. It was crucial to keep the criminally insane locked up. He spoke like a salesman, telling me every little detail about the asylum whether it was important or not. The crystal was working.

We entered a large room with lots of beds. It must have been one of the women’s wards. On one of the beds sat an old woman carefully brushing the hair of a younger woman sitting on the floor beside the bed. They looked so normal, like mother and daughter. It was hard to imagine them as insane, much less criminals. I asked Mark about them.

“The older woman you see is Henrietta Crane,” he explained. “She was one of our first patients. It’s a tragic story, really.”

He looked at me like he really wanted to continue but was afraid to tell me the rest of the story, because I was a fragile woman who needed to be protected from such atrocities and might faint at any moment. I assured him that I would be fine and urged him to continue. With some hesitation, he did, though he refused to look at me while he did so.

“She found out her husband was having an affair with a younger woman and in her rage,” Mark continued to stare at his unusually white shoes, “she killed their infant daughter. She was jealous of her youth, you see. Some women find aging to be rather difficult and Henrietta is now under the delusion that by killing the child, she stole its youth, and now believes herself to be a young girl.”

I studied Henrietta’s joyful smile, the way she stuck her tongue between her lips in concentration, the way she treated the younger woman like a doll to be played with.

“What about the other girl?” I asked. “The younger woman.” He blushed as if I had just asked about his undergarments.

“We’re trying something new with that one.” He strained against the crystal at that point, but I urged him to continue.

“What do you mean?”

“Viewing that individual as a woman, she is perfectly sane and has no business being in an asylum, much less Broadmoor.”

“but…” I prompted. The crystal wouldn’t let him lie, but I wouldn’t let him stop speaking.

“But following genetics and viewing that individual as a man paints an entirely different picture. When Isaac Barker’s parents first brought him here, he was unstable and very violent. He was also under the delusion that he was a woman, which is the main reason they brought him here. They wanted him locked up for good.”

“For months, we tried putting him with the men, but it just didn’t work out. No matter how beaten and wounded he became-”

“Beaten?” I asked, interrupting him.

“Usually by the other patients,” he clarified. “He just wouldn’t stop telling us he was a woman. Finally one of the nurses decided that ‘if Isaac Barker wants to play dress up, then I say we let him. There’s a lot madder things going on here.’ It’s much easier this way. He’s so calm and well behaved now.”

“But you won’t allow her to leave?” I asked. His eye twitched at my feminine pronoun and I internally smirked. Where I’m from, we’ve gotten rid of gender-specific pronouns all together, replacing he and she with ‘ze,’ his and her with ‘zes,’ and him and her with ‘zer.’ Placing so much emphasis on two simple chromosomes is ridiculous anyway.

“Don’t worry,” Mark said, thinking I had asked because I was afraid of Isaac being released. He continued in a deep and serious tone. “No one ever leaves Broadmoor.”

As we continued the tour, I felt bad that Isaac could never leave this prison, but at the same time, I wondered if the world on the outside, living for her parents’ approval and trying to be socially accepted would be a-whole-nother prison entirely, just with different rules and uniforms.