The Redwood Asylum

by L.A. Detwiler

We cannot always fault people for being who they are in the time they are born into.

If you know anything about human nature, you know that mercy rarely overstays its welcome.

There are never any flashing lights or billboards that tell you when your world is going to careen off the path. It just happens, leaving us with whiplash, tears, and a churning sense of regret that we missed all the signs.

Curiosity kills more than cats at Redwood, though.

The dead might speak, but someone has to listen for them to be heard. And at that moment, I was not giving the yellow girl a microphone.

With the right wording and photographs, even the chamber of hell could look inviting.

The world never listens to madness, as history and time prove. It shuts it out instead, haughtily believing they are above it and that modern medicine seeks to cure and not to profit.

Not all madness gets locked up, after all. Sometimes the maddest are left free, stalking about the world sucking up life.