Roused by the impending darkness, the bats swooped and circled over the grounds of Highmarsh Psychiatric Hospital. They did not falter in their graceful arcs and twists as Michael Henley, raper and murderer of young girls, leapt up from the bed next to mine and thrust his pale arm through the bars of the window and screamed.

Malformed trees scratched at the red brick of the hospital walls, their bark darkening with the sinking sun until they became blacker than the night. I closed my eyes and tried to recall the feel of her lips but could not; it was lost, that feeling, buried under too many things that I dared not disturb. The night was filled with terrible sounds: crying, screaming, flesh being pounded against stone, masturbation, yelling. Yet they served me, these outpourings of emotion, as a distrac...

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