Damned.

“So you’re saying that I either spend five years in jail or plead insanity?”

Michel’s lawyer nodded his head. “The firm’s psychiatrist says that you genuinely suffer from something called bibliomania.”

Michel clenched his jaw and looked around the tiny room. “I’m not some nut case Richard and you know that as well as anyone.”

“I know Michel but you’re the one who stole millions of dollars worth of books. You even admitted to eating several of them!”

Michel banged his fist on the table. “I’m on a quest for knowledge. I’ve told you that repeatedly.”

Richard pinched the bridge of his nose and closed his eyes. “What’s it going to be Michel?”

Michel muttered his reply and the two men exited the room to return to the courtroom. Richard did his closing remarks and told the court that Michel would plead insanity. The judge took a few minutes to scribble something down on his pad of paper and Michel twitched his foot anxiously.

“In way of settling case number three hundred seventy-four,” the judge announced. “Michel Louis-Charles has pled insanity and will serve a minimum of three years or more at Ashworth Hospital until he is deemed as cured.”

With a shake of his head Michel was brought back to the present. He hated thinking about how he wound up here but sometimes he just couldn’t help it. Every time he had a chance to be alone in his room his thoughts would be occupied with the day he was sent here.

It’s not that the plain white walls bothered Michel. He just didn’t like it. Suffice it to say that at least everything matched. Michel supposed that having everything white kept the whole place uniform but the whole aura of his room seemed… sterile. Not homey, not even inhabited- simply sterile.

Even though the autumn sky outside of Michel’s window didn’t do much to illuminate the place he found it hard to see in his room.

“Try to blind the guy who loves to read with luminescent white walls why don’t you?” he’d thought his first day at Ashworth and every day after.

He wondered if everyone else’s room was like his or if they were preying upon him specifically. It was almost as if they knew what he’d done; that he’d stolen all of those books and pled insanity rather than spend five years in jail. Maybe his roommate had done something equally ludicrous, he thought as he glanced at the twin bed across the room, and that’s how they got stuck in there together.

The long awaited knock came at his door as it did every day at exactly three in the afternoon. A nurse entered the room and Michel stood from his supine position on his bed.
She searched around the room silently and thoroughly before coming to a halt in front of Michel. She smiled at him and he returned with a blank gaze.

“I find no infractions today Michel. There might just be a little reward for you later…”

He barely nodded and she left the room. It’s not that Chelsea- the nurse- wasn’t a beautiful woman or that she hadn’t taken advantage of Michel before but he simply had more important things to do at the moment. Michel counted to ten very slowly in his head before dashing to the single white bureau he assumed each patient had. He pulled out the very last drawer and shoved his hand behind it. He searched blindly until he found what he was looking for.

Michel then sat on his bed with a copy of Dr. Seuss’ Hop on Pop. One of the other patients is learning how to read and Michel traded him his entire lunch for the book. He’d been waiting all day for that nurse to come and go so he could have some reading time to himself.

He rubbed the book over his stubbly cheek, awkwardly down his neck and chest and back up again. He flipped through the pages and inhaled the scent of paper. A tremble of pleasure passed through Michel as he opened the book and began to read, letting the light from his window shine onto it.