Madhouse Fog. Sean Carswell

      

      Also by Sean Carswell

       Train Wreck Girl

       Barney’s Crew

       Glue and Ink Rebellion

       Drinks for the Little Guy

       Madhouse Fog

       Sean Carswell

       Manic D Press San Francisco

      This is a work of fiction. All characters and locations appearing in this work are fictitious. Any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, and places is purely coincidental.

      Cover photo by Nino Andonis

      Madhouse Fog ©2013 by Sean Carswell. All rights reserved.

      Published by Manic D Press. For information, contact Manic D Press,

PO Box 410804, San Francisco CA 94141	www.manicdpress.com
ISBN 978-1-933149-75-2 (print)	printed in the USA
ISBN 978-1-933149-76-9 (ebook)

       Cataloging in Publication data is available from the Library of Congress

      for

      Wendy Bishop, Sheila Ortiz Taylor,

      and

      Jerome Stern

       Contents

       Acknowledgments

       1

       2

       3

       4

       5

       6

       7

       8

       9

       10

       11

       12

       13

       14

       15

       16

       17

       18

       19

       20

       21

       22

       23

       24

       25

       26

       27

       28

       29

       30

       31

       32

       33

       34

       35

       36

       37

       38

       1

      I’d been hearing a voice in my head lately. Not voices. One voice, and I didn’t want to listen. It still somehow convinced me to take a job at the Oak View State Psychiatric Hospital.

      The first thing I did on arrival at Oak View was to take a seat in the back row of a large lecture hall. All of the hospital administrators and a good chunk of staff were having the beginning-of-the-year meeting there. I sat between two empty chairs and scanned the hall for Dr. Bishop.

      Despite what the voice in my head might tell you, I was not a patient at the hospital. I was a new employee. Dr. Bishop had hired me to write the grants needed to keep this facility humming.

      All the other voices in my head—which were all mine; I usually refer to them as thoughts—had told me to stay in Fresno, to find a way to breathe life back into my suffocating marriage, to keep writing grants that would fund the community space I’d helped to create and dedicated fifteen years of my life to running. For some reason, I listened to Dr. Bishop’s voice. I took this job at Oak View and joined the staff at the staff meeting.

      An exceptionally short woman sat down next to me. She said, “You must be Mr. Brown.”

      She offered her tiny hand for me to shake. I shook it. It felt like a canary in my palm.

      “I am. How’d you know?”

      She swept her bangs sideways above her right eyebrow. “I know that everyone else in here is not Mr. Brown so I made an educated guess.”

      I nodded.

      She said, “I’m Dr. Benengeli.”

      I didn’t exactly follow. I thought she