Tiny Fiction
Tiny Town Satellite Town of Romulus – And tell us why Valentine's Day should be reserved for the loves of the living only?
Did not the former inmates of Willard Psychiatric Center, in their day, seek love, seek to be treasured and cherished, even if their minds could perceive of no such thing?
The history of the place, as haunted as any in the world, is full of dark tragedy.
Not all unfortunate souls committed to Willard were bereft of their senses or born with encephalopathy.
Some were orphans or penniless foster children who became wards of the state.
If they were slow to learn, Willard became their home for their entire lives -- until the state closed the place down beginning in the 70s and released these fugitives from society into surrounding cities and towns.
We interviewed one of them, long ago, in truth a poor cousin of the Cornell family, who did not re-enter society until of a late age.
She was a night owl and liked to sit in the State Diner and drink coffee. She was whip smart, funny and eminently lovable. There she found friends and was loved, in a way, and beloved in a much larger sense. If we withhold her full name today, it is not because she was a phantom of our imagination -- a story was published about her in the local paper of record in the late 1980s -- No.
We withhold her name for she was one of the last representatives of many nameless untouchables, most all of them to the ash heap, their bones boon companions to that other anonymous freight of the earth, the fossils: To these ghosts do we at Tiny Town Times wish a very Happy Valentine's Day, late and soon.
–– C. Penbroke Handy
