Mental Care Institution

The psychiatric hospital was secluded away on the edge of a lake surrounded by hills.  An old castle was converted into this state of the art insane asylum.  Dr. Joseph B. Strange was the director of this mental facility and he believed in treating all the patients with cannabis, till they developed acatalepsy.  He thought that since human knowledge never amounts to certainty, but only to probability, that treatment should go no further than to appear as being a therapy and verisimilitude was acceptable, as long as the patients were happy.  The only bad side effect of using the cannabis seemed to be the irrational disorder known as eleutheromania that certain long term patients developed.  These patients that craved their freedom would try to escape every now and then saying that when they thought they were being followed by a moon shadow, so they didn’t like being cooped up.

This situation always got worse when there was a full moon, and if a patient was caught trying to escape the loony bin, then they would have to spend three days in a padded cell.  Today the institution would hold a beauty pageant for teenage girls between 15-19 years, allowing the budding beauties from ward C to compete against each other to see who was superior.  Dr. Strange saw merit in holding these beauty pageants, as he felt it was good for their personal development and it let them shed their innocence.  Each girl was allowed to dance to their own original music and they were given five minutes to say how they would improve the world.  Crazy Kate really wanted to win this year, so during her speech she started to hike her skirt all the way up.  I guess it is poetic justice that Dr. Strange was arrested after the show and his license was taken away so he could never practice psychiatry again.

Written for Sheryl’s Daily Word Prompt – Superior, for the Daily Spur prompt – Innocence, for FOWC with Fandango – Poetic, for July Monthly Writing Prompts – Budding beauties, for Ragtag Community – Hike, for Reena’s Exploration Challenge #95 – Acatalepsy and Eleutheromania, for Sue Vincent’s July 4, 2019 Thursday Photo Prompt – Castle, for Rachel Poli I Read I Write I Create – Time To Write Creative Writing prompt Random Words 16 – Shadow, Bin, Merit and for Word of the Day Challenge Prompt – Original.