The First Sign Of Madness

• Lachlan Blain, Grade 11
• Short Story
• 2015

This was it, then. Stuck in this chamber for the rest of my days. Just me and the grey walls, me and my spinning head; a head that already had developed a distant throbbing. Day, night, day, night. Nothing else, I thought. This was it.
And then came the fateful day.
Or more importantly, the fateful voice I woke up to.
“How’s it going?” the voice said cheerfully.
I pulled myself from my mattress and looked around. The silver toilet was bolted to the ground. The grey walls stared back at me. No one had spoken. The voices were beginning. They say that’s the first sign of madness.
“Not necessarily,” the voice said again. “Others say talking to brooms is the first sign of madness.”
I spun around. A broom was leaning on the side of the wall, poised innocently next to my mattress.
“Relax,” the broom said. “Everyone’s a bit shocked at first. Brooms can’t talk. That’s impossible. Well, let me tell you this, boy. Nothing’s impossible in here.”
I wasn’t sure if I imagined it, but I distinctly saw the broom lean in closer to me.
“What if I told you that we could break out, right here, right now?”
I struggled for a response.
“Well actually, I can’t tell you that,” the broom admitted. “I’ve been trying to break out of here for twenty seven years. Would have managed it too, if the toilet didn’t blow my cover.”
The toilet waved at me.
The throbbing in my head began to grow more intense. This wasn’t happening. Not so soon, anyway. I couldn’t be going insane.
“Oh, you’re perfectly insane,” the broom said. “But I won’t hold that against you. The last guy was pretty nuts too.”
“The last guy?” I said. “What happened to him?”
“I ate him,” the broom laughed, and in such a way that I couldn’t tell if he was being serious or not.
I suppose I could be hallucinating, I thought to myself. Maybe it was all just a terrible dream.
“Isn’t everything just a dream though?” the broom said, with a distinctly raised eyebrow. “You and me, figments of the universe’s imagination. That’s my theory, anyway.”
The grey walls began to close in. My head felt like it was about to explode. I was completely mad. I needed to break out. I stumbled towards a wall. Break out, break out. My head lurched forwards. And then there was darkness.

I awoke to a smiling man in a white coat. A woman with a clipboard stood beside him.
“Well done,” the man said. “You’ve aided the experiment greatly. Helped us prove our hypothesis. Excellent work.”
The memories came flooding back. Anger rose up inside me.
“You mean this was just a sick joke?” I yelled. “What are you testing? If you can turn a man insane? Make him talk to himself?”
“Actually, we were testing the genetic modification of brooms,” the broom in the corner of the room said.
I fainted.