Bowie enjoyed the steam that drifted out of the bathroom when Judith took her showers. He’d usually whip into the bathroom when she wasn’t looking and pad around in the shower, absorbing the warmth and drinking from the leaky tap. He leapt up to the bathroom sink counter, as Cassidy washed herself. A massive spider crawled out of the drain slowly. The cat leaned in for a closer look. No, not so big. It took less than a few bites to finish it off before hopping down to slide into the shower for a wash. It felt good to have Cassidy back in the house. Judith always screamed when he tried to join her in the shower. Bitch.
Seeing the town in the daytime it was clear that Parsley had changed. It looked the same, but there was an unsettled energy in the air and there were far more happy wanderers than she remembered when she left. The streets were still narrow, lined with flowering trees and the quaint shops had given way to a few coffee shops, nail salons and tattoo parlours. Parsley was small but not so small that everyone knew who you were. Unless you were Cassidy Holmes. Everyone in town could say they knew about her family. As a child she had an idyllic upbringing. An older brother who was just old enough that he didn't pick on her so much as keep an eye on her when bullies lurked. She was a tiny girl and had grown into a wee adult. All the kids at school knew not to mess with Big Christian’s little sister. His friends would even call her little C and by extension of their friendship with him looked out for her. She could take care of herself, but rarely had to exercise any violence except in self- defense of her mother. Her mother, was in The Plant.
The Parsley Health Institute was the town's crazy hospital. Nobody was supposed to call it that but they did anyway in the quiet of their dusty basements among friends and less enlightened family members. Mental illness was difficult to hide in a town of 15,613.
Now called the PHI for short, it started as the Parsley Mental Asylum in the 1829 and then the Parsley Mental Institution in the 1930s. People would call it the Plant for short because its inhabitants were more or less vegetables. This was incorrect, of course, because very few non crazy people would ever step foot in the Plant for fear of becoming an unwilling inhabitant. Just being inside would point the finger at the visitor as being related to crazy or possibly infected. The Plant was known as a perfect place to dump a wife who didn't know how to listen or take a punch. There were many people there, mainly women, claiming they weren't nuts and summarily quieted with drugs, restraints or a visit from certain orderlies. The pregnancies were kept quiet and the resultant squealing evidence was spirited away to happy unsuspecting couples desperate for children they were unable to conceive.
Nobody called it mental illness back then and not even now in spite of medical advances about chemical imbalances. No, to Parse natives the members of the Plant were crackers, bonkers, loco, off their rocker, got a screw loose, one sandwich short of a picnic or, to be more colourful, bat-shit crazy.
Cassidy's mom was crazy. The proper term is Schizoaffective Disorder. Not quite bipolar and not entirely schizophrenic, Hyacinth had been difficult to diagnose for years. She'd been put in The Plant against her will when she was 32 and Cassidy was 10 years old. The decision to put her there was made by Cassidy's dad and grandmother after she tried to drown Cassidy in the kitchen sink while they washed dishes together. See, Cassidy comes by her paranoia the old-fashioned way: multiple failed attempts at filicide by dear old mom. Hang on to your butts, this is gonna be wild.