Madman's Marsh

He sank deep into the muddy ground with each step. Cold water seeped into his boots along the seams, and the edge of his cloak dripped where it had dipped into the marsh after he had almost tripped. He had to backtrack often, and on one turn his foot had gotten stuck in a particularly gooey patch. He had nearly fallen, but a wild snatch at the tall grasses kept him upright. The price was a collection of long thin cuts where the blades of the plants sliced into his hands. They smarted now. He would have liked to wash them off, but the only water was in stagnant ponds or gritty puddles. So, he made his slow way through the marsh while the dirt on his hands dried and irritated the scratches.
He no longer remembered what had possessed him to come into the marsh in the first place. He thought it had something to do with fear, but his only clear memory was of standing on a hill and looking out over the flat wetlands, with defiance in his mind and certainty in his posture. It had looked so easy. He knew it wasn't, now, but when he had stood on the hill he had seen the distant trees clearly and resolved to reach them in a few hours. He wondered when he first began to doubt himself. The tall grasses, twice the height of a man sunk to the knee in muck, were only the beginning. After walking for a day and a half, he had finally admitted that the plants were not going to shrink as he got further into the marsh.
Sometimes, to keep his head clear as he struggled with sucking ground and stinging marsh plants, he tried to remember his past. It was surprisingly difficult. He came from a different world, he knew that. At least, his world was not one where grass grew high overhead and blocked vision as effectively as walls. He knew he had never had to beware of every step, lest the ground give way with a splash. But as soon as he tried to recall his name, or his father's voice, or whether he had a sister, tricky footing and obstreperous weeds distracted him. An hour later he would pause on a firm hillock to gnaw on a tuber pulled from the ground, and realize that he had not always lived in such a way.
Finally, on a cloudy day when the dull light trickled down into the marsh, he caught sight of treetops.
"About bloody time," he said, speaking barely above a whisper. His voice sounded odd, croaky, after days of silent walking. It was loud in his ears, true, but he felt it vanished into the marsh as thoroughly as steam into cold air. A moment of frightening visibility, and then complete absence.
The dark branches of the trees beckoned like fingers across the marsh. He began to hurry, stumbling on soft uneven ground and splattering mud on his clothing. His cloak caught on stiff, rough grass and fuzzy-leafed stalks, but he only hurried faster, impatiently tugging the fabric away from the plants.
He pushed through a last tangled wave of grass, and stepped into the open. He expected to see trees, willows along a stream or the edge of a forest.
Instead, he saw three white walls. He stared at them incredulously, then turned--to flee back into the marsh, or at least to mark where the walls began. His spine gave an involuntary tremor as he realized what his eyes were seeing.
There was no marsh.
There was only another white wall, with a narrow window made of tinted glass. He stepped towards it, raised a trembling hand to touch it, and stopped. His eyes dropped to his arm, covered in a clean white sleeve of some thick canvas cloth. He laid the fingers of his other hand on it. With numb disbelief he slid his hand up to his elbow, then touched his throat where the white jacket closed. He looked down. He was dressed all in coarse white cloth, with soft canvas shoes. It was not what he had been wearing in the marsh.
It occurred to him then that he had never been in the marsh. He remembered things now, the things he had tried to recall without success while wandering amongst the grasses. His mother, an old woman with a craggy face. His sister, with lines around her mouth and sharp words coming out...medication...treatment...delusion.
He spun away from the window as a soft female voice said: "How are you today, Mr. Ellivlem?" [Opt. ending: "Whatever have you done to your hands? It never ceases to amaze me how you can get them covered in mud, just sitting in your room]
A door had opened in the opposite wall, and a nurse was standing just outside. He remembered now, fuzzily, that every day he was walked to other rooms in the building. He walked with the nurse with out complaint, going wherever she steered him.
He felt horribly numb. At least, in the marsh, he had not known he was insane...
He swallowed pills and walked on machines which sped up and slowed down without going anywhere. When he was given bland tasteless food he ate it.
"I almost miss the tubers," he thought, before realizing they had never been real. The marsh must all have been one huge hallucination or dream. The irony was that the hospital, where he was, felt far less real. The pills made his eyesight hazy and his steps uncertain. Tinted glass separated the patients from the world outside, and turned the light a strange grey as it streamed in through the windows. It mixed with the fluourescent lights in a peculiar fashion, so that shadows lay on the floor wrong. He felt incredibly tired as the nurse led him back to his room.
After the door closed, he sat down on edge of the bed that was pushed against one wall.
"It wasn't real," he said to himself again. "The marsh wasn't real."
He gripped his hands together, and went rigid as pain shot up his arms. He glanced at the door, and then at his hands. They had long thin scratches on the palms, and mud was crusted under his fingernails.
"No," he whispered. He blinked, kept his eyes closed for a moment, then opened them. He was standing in the marsh, head bowed over his hands, surrounded by grass.
"I have to get out," he murmured, and did not know if he meant the marsh or the asylum.