This is how I met Tyler Gibson, the oldest fruitcake in the place at that point, who was similarly ostracised by the madness elite. They didn't like Tyler because he actually behaved like he was nuts. He was the kind of crazy person that normal people feel comfortable with, because they can point fingers at the weird guy doing strange things and then write him off. Unlike myself, Tyler only ever heard one voice. "It's hard to tell you're mad when the craziest voice you hear is your own," he told me once when we were sitting outside. Thus Tyler accounted for how he'd spent sixty five years of his life living with normal people not knowing he was round the bend.

I have to sympathise. I can't remember a time when I haven't heard voices. I once had a thought that they might have been there with me in the womb, before I even had the ears to hear them, and promptly laughed out loud. I got a few strange looks for that. "Just the voices again, telling me jokes," I say, just to annoy the crazies. But the truth is, the voices weren't talking to me then. They hadn't spoken to me in hours at that point, and didn't speak to me again until the next day. It happens like that sometimes.

"Can you tell me how many different voices you can hear?"

This is one of Doctor Fender's favourite questions. It's one I can't answer, because I usually only ever hear each voice once, but the last time he asked it I just said, "Actually, doctor, it just sounds like you every time." He smiled, but made a note of it anyway. Making self-conscious jokes about your own mental state is a sure sign of a cure, so I was hoping they might let me out. After all, Doctor Fender has talked to enough mad people to know they're deadly serious about their conversations with lampshades, and the like. In fact, if you ever see a crazy person laugh whilst talking to a lampshade, it's unlikely to be because they're aware how daft they look - it's more likely the lampshade's just told them a funny joke. Sad, but true.

I for one have never had a conversation with a lampshade. For a long time, I tried not to have conversations with the voices at all. I used to, back when I was the seventeen year old who still had imaginary friends. It was only after I came to this place that I started to consciously ignore them, and after that they left me alone for a while. Doctor Fender claimed this was due to the drugs and the therapy, and even had the bloody cheek to claim I was making it up when one suddenly decided to speak to me again on the day he wanted to send me home. I do wonder sometimes whether that man is on the right side of the fence. There are crazy people in this place without as cracked a sense of logic.

The problem with Doctor Fender is that he likes to find patterns in everything. His specialty, as far as I am concerned, is finding patterns where there aren't any. He's a scientist. He sees craziness as a mathematical problem, and even then only sees the problem in terms of its solution. Drugs plus therapy leads to sanity equals cure. He was never going to believe I had started hearing a new voice on my way out the door back into the real world. For him, that was a variable that did not factor into his equations. Sometimes I do think they should let crazy people treat each other. It takes a crazy person to really understand another crazy person, and whilst Doctor Fender is a little flipped, he's just not sufficiently nuts to qualify.

Of course, if all crazy people are as precious about their insanity as this bunch in here, expecting them to treat themselves is-

"Can you hear me?"

This is how they usually come to me. That's why it was no surprise when one started speaking to me even after Doctor Fender was satisfied he'd cured me. He couldn't predict it happening simply because it can't be predicted.

"Yes, I can hear you," I say. "Who are you?"

As per usual, it sounds like I'm on the telephone with this guy. I can only hear him through one ear, and he sounds at once distant and right beside me. There was this one time when I was actually on the phone with someone when a voice interrupted. I got so confused as to which was which that when I put the phone down I still expected to be talking to the person I'd hung up on. The voice was grumpy with me after I'd tried to get rid of him and pestered me for a whole weekend.

"My name is Greg," the voice continues. "Greg Ibanez."

"What do you want, Greg?"

"I want you to do something for me," he says.

They always do.

I first realised I wasn't in the slightest bit crazy not too long ago, just after Doctor Fender released Tyler Gibson. Tyler had always been Doctor Fender's favourite inmate as well as my own, mainly because he was such a clear-cut psychotic. He wanted to be cured, so he didn't hide anything, he welcomed the drugs and looked forward to therapy. Unlike the rest of us, he came here of his own accord, and unlike the rest of us, his wasn't a happy craziness. I look at most of the people here and they're happy wallowing in this group delusion that their affliction makes them superior human beings. For them, their craziness is at the core of their identity, and they're not going to be robbed of that just so they can live settled lives amongst the proletariat. Most of all, they enjoy the fight. Tyler wasn't like that. It had taken him decades, but he'd finally realised why he wasn't happy, right at the same moment when he realised that the voice in his head wasn't his own.

Doctor Fender was convinced he'd cured Tyler when the old man stopped ignoring practically everybody else and started talking to the rest of the crazies, even when they didn't talk back - especially when they didn't talk back. I believe Doctor Fender secretly considers patronising another nut-job proof of sanity, even though he never does it himself. Tyler had spent a lifetime ignoring people, first because the voice had told him to presumably, and then lately because he feared any voice he heard might still be his own.

I stood at the gate and watched him go. He was back in three weeks.

There aren't any wards here. Each room has no more than three beds but the room I shared with Tyler only has two. In the time Tyler had been away, Doctor Fender hadn't found anyone to fill his bed, so it was ready waiting for him when he reappeared one evening. I didn't hear them bring him back in. I blame that on the tranquillisers. I'm not restless at night, so they don't give me a large dose. They usually wear off around four, so I often stir at about half past before promptly falling back asleep naturally. The night on which Tyler returned, however, I didn't go back to sleep. I heard his whispering in the darkness.

"Tyler?" I whispered back.

At first I thought it was another of my voices. Not only do they interrupt me on the phone or ask me if I'm busy whilst I'm in the shower but they also like to come and wake me up at night.

"You're awake," he said.

"Tyler? Is that you?"

"Yes. It's me."

"What are you doing back here?"

"Came to see you."

"Came to... Why?"

"I realised something on the outside."

"Tyler?"

"They're all wrong in here, you know."

"Who?"

"The basket cases."

"What about?"

"They can be cured."

"I know that, Tyler."

"I know you do, I know you do."

"Tyler?"

"Yes?"

"Are you sick again?"

"No. No. I'm fine now. I'm cured."

When I woke up in the morning, they'd moved Tyler out again. I went looking for him in all the normal places we would often sit together. He'd sounded strange during the night and I was worried. Eventually I went to Doctor Fender himself and demanded to know where Tyler was. I suppose in retrospect that proved to him I really was as crazy as I made out. He told me Tyler hung himself a week ago, patted me on the head and threw me a doggie treat.

I'm sitting with him now.

"Greg Ibanez wants you to tell his wife he still loves her," I tell him. "Her name is Fiona. She lives at Flat 6, The Arcadias... I can't remember the town, though. It was somewhere in West Sussex."

Doctor Fender writes something on his pad, but to be honest I wouldn't be surprised if he's already forgotten Greg's surname.

"Can we talk about Tyler Gibson?" he asks me.

"Why?" I ask.

I haven't heard from Tyler since the week he died.

"I think it's important," he explains. "I think we need to try and understand why he couldn't cope back in the real world."

I already know why, and I didn't need Tyler to explain. I've often wondered what the world would be like without the voices. I guess Tyler found out.

NOTES:
This was written in a single afternoon after some musings at 1.30am the night before. Given its similarities to "The Sixth Sense", it's funny that it should have followed a similar path. I read once that M. Night Shyamalan's original draft for the movie had the little boy being visited by the victims of a serial killer and Bruce Willis enlisting his help in tracking the villain down. I thought this was a much better plot than the film that was made, so decided to write a story about the ghost of a suspected serial killer visiting a medium to prove his innocence. In the end, I too dropped the serial killer idea altogether. I've been wanting to write a story about insanity for some time. Tyler Gibson is, of course, named after everyone's favourite schizophrenic Tyler Durden. Incidentally, Fender, Gibson and Ibanez are all guitar manufacturers. Yes, I'm scraping the barrel when it comes to character names these days. I couldn't even stretch to naming my narrator.