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What happens when a psychic who can’t control her powers gets institutionalized?

Bryce Dekker is a young woman that has suddenly been given extraordinary power, a psychic link to her surroundings. In her desire to help others, she becomes entangled in a murder case where her knowledge of specifics has made her the #1 suspect.

Now mandated to undergo observation at Werthem Glen Sanitarium, Bryce is at the mercy of her fellow patients. Surrounded by madness and unable to control her power, she is having a hard time separating her thoughts from the insanity around her.

Bryce has found only one way to keep track of reality, and that’s by keeping a record of the visions and voices in her head. She has become the vessel for those around her, telling the stories of their illness. She is the biographer of their insanity. Their stories have become hers, and Bryce’s only hope is that by embracing the madness, she finds her sanity.

Asylum Doors is a serial comic we'll run every Wednesday.  See the previous installment here.  Stay tuned for next week's installment.

Chris Prunckle is a graphic designer, illustrator and comic book artist banished to the suburbs of Chicago. Though an advertising industry minion by day, he slaves his nights away creating a mad little world.  He’s previously worked on the comics Fisted, Bonesetter, and The Scarab.  Follow him at @midjipress.

In conjunction with Chicago Writers House and The Chicagoan, Curbside Splendor Publishing presents:

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Chicago's finest independent publishers will be on hand hocking their goods.  Quimby's Bookstore will also stock a table with a selection of books/zines penned by Chicagoans. The bar will be open so grab a cocktail and listen to live music all afternoon as you ogle some books and satiate your bibliophiliac needs!

Sunday December 9, 2pm to 7pm at The Empty Bottle (1035 N. Western Ave.). 

FREE with an RSVP at: http://www.emptybottle.com/show/3188944/ 

Otherwise $5 at the door. 

Current list of participating Chicago publishers (check back for updates):

&Now Books
7 Vientos
826chi
Allium Press
Anobium Literary Magazine
Another Chicago Magazine
ANTIBOOKCLUB
Anything Goes Publishing
Artifice
Burial Day Books
Chicago Center for Literature and Photography (CCLaP)
contratiempo
Convulsive Editions
Curbside Splendor Publishing
Dream of Things
Graze Magazine
The Handshake
Kenning Editions
MAKE Magazine
Other Voices (OV) Books
Solace in So Many Words
Switchback Books

Sweet Tunes provided by:

Good Evening
Mr. Mayor and the Highballers
Wooden Wing
&more!

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What happens when a psychic who can’t control her powers gets institutionalized?

Bryce Dekker is a young woman that has suddenly been given extraordinary power, a psychic link to her surroundings. In her desire to help others, she becomes entangled in a murder case where her knowledge of specifics has made her the #1 suspect.

Now mandated to undergo observation at Werthem Glen Sanitarium, Bryce is at the mercy of her fellow patients. Surrounded by madness and unable to control her power, she is having a hard time separating her thoughts from the insanity around her.

Bryce has found only one way to keep track of reality, and that’s by keeping a record of the visions and voices in her head. She has become the vessel for those around her, telling the stories of their illness. She is the biographer of their insanity. Their stories have become hers, and Bryce’s only hope is that by embracing the madness, she finds her sanity.

Asylum Doors is a serial comic we'll run every Wednesday.  See the previous installment here.  Stay tuned for next week's installment.

Chris Prunckle is a graphic designer, illustrator and comic book artist banished to the suburbs of Chicago. Though an advertising industry minion by day, he slaves his nights away creating a mad little world.  He’s previously worked on the comics Fisted, Bonesetter, and The Scarab.  Follow him at @midjipress.

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What happens when a psychic who can’t control her powers gets institutionalized?

Bryce Dekker is a young woman that has suddenly been given extraordinary power, a psychic link to her surroundings. In her desire to help others, she becomes entangled in a murder case where her knowledge of specifics has made her the #1 suspect.

Now mandated to undergo observation at Werthem Glen Sanitarium, Bryce is at the mercy of her fellow patients. Surrounded by madness and unable to control her power, she is having a hard time separating her thoughts from the insanity around her.

Bryce has found only one way to keep track of reality, and that’s by keeping a record of the visions and voices in her head. She has become the vessel for those around her, telling the stories of their illness. She is the biographer of their insanity. Their stories have become hers, and Bryce’s only hope is that by embracing the madness, she finds her sanity.

Asylum Doors is a serial comic we'll run every Wednesday.  Stay tuned for next week's installment.

Chris Prunckle is a graphic designer, illustrator and comic book artist banished to the suburbs of Chicago. Though an advertising industry minion by day, he slaves his nights away creating a mad little world.  He’s previously worked on the comics Fisted, Bonesetter, and The Scarab.  Follow him at @midjipress.

Some people swore that the house was haunted. There were shrills, moans and clanking. The windows were smeared in dirt, the bottom stair creaked by itself and the big tree in the back- the kind that look like a girl with her hair hanging down- hid creatures within its branches that howled in the middle of the night.

Neighbors hurried by when they heard those sounds and saw the windows tremble. Sometimes it was a front window with dust coated so thick like charcoal frosting.  Sometimes it was the side kitchen window with wood mini shanks that popped off as the frame rattled, shrieks escaped through the cracks.

But it wasn’t the house that was haunted. I knew that and it was easier for the neighbors to think that. Those noises befell when my mom skipped one of her pills because she said she felt better. Her eyes stretched and the blue in them swirled like licorice. Her cropped hair with its mismatched layers except for the bare patches where she yanked out the strands because her hair is what kept the rabbits from eating the strawberries in the garden, hence the dozens of pigmy tumbleweeds swept across the garden that never grew anything edible.

Those moments when she forgot that she loved me and instead all I did was remind her of my father, with my eyes that lie just like his, she’d say, she would lash me with one of his old belts with the metal buckle that left his initials sprouting on my body. That belt was the only other thing he left behind besides my mother and myself.

At first I screamed which made her pelt me more. The buckle of the belt would bash against the floor first and if it missed my back or was blocked by my arm, it would smash into a lamp or the wall and once it clobbered the door handle of the microwave. She struck with such force the miniature house convulsed and she chased me around the maze of Fancy Feast cans stacked around the house like games of Jenga. When dad left, he took a suitcase, one framed picture of him and me when we went to the circus where I was so petrified of the clowns my eyes soaked red and he took Sunshine, our cat.  Mom still kept buying Sunshine food just like she kept buying my dad’s favorite bagels because he would come back any day now, but neither did show up at the doorstep.  

After awhile, I stopped screaming because although I knew the neighbors could hear me nobody ever came. When I went to school or to the corner store, they peeked at me as they sat on their stoops and lowered their eyes or instead stare and shake their heads scurrying away as though a strong wind came just for them and gave them a push.