Upside Down: Mavis

the last chapter of luminaria!

Since December, Terror House Magazine has been publishing installments of my science fiction novel, Luminaria. Now we’ve reached the last chapter…or is it?

I’m already working on the next ten chapters.

Over these past few months this has given me a chance to see reactions and make changes so that when the book is published sometime around August it will be the best version possible.

It’s okay to read this last chapter. It will leave you with more questions than answers.

Luminaria, Chapter 10: Upside Down — Mavis (terrorhousemag.com)

Excerpt:

I spent six months in Camarillo State Hospital. Why? Because I refused to say what I saw with my own two eyes at that theater didn’t happen. You think the doctors of death died out with Nazi Germany? Well, they didn’t. They’re still very much alive right here in the good old US of A. At Camarillo State Hospital.

They tied me to a bed. Gave me meds that made it so I couldn’t move or scream. All the while, I was fully aware and could feel everything they did to me. You know your worst nightmare, when you’re running from something but you never escape and you can’t even scream? It’s worse than that. Because you’re wide awake, lying there with doctors and nurses in white, probing and prodding and sticking you. Pain and terror so bad you scream and scream, but nothing comes out your mouth.

All the while they keep telling you what’s real is fake and what’s fake is real and right is left and left is right and up is down and down is up.

Electric shock. Peeing uncontrollably. I had three seizures while I was there. And now I have to be on anti-seizure meds for the rest of my life.

Psychiatrists are sickos. Perverts. I lost about 20 pounds and I’m a small person already. I became dangerously ill. Addicted to the meds.

But even in that hell, there was kindness. Some smart mental patients. Actually, smarter than most people I’ve known on the outside. And real heroes, too. I learned how to fool the orderlies and the doctors into thinking I was taking the meds. I’m an actor, after all, so I started acting for my life. Pretending I’d learned my lesson. I said I’d been wrong. I realized the error of my ways and admitted it was all a lie. I complied.

And eventually they let me out.

You can read all the chapters here: Luminaria Archives (terrorhousemag.com)