'My shoes tapped along the long echoey lino corridor as I headed for the psycho-geriatric ward that I’d been assigned to. The featureless passageway was empty, no one to be seen until I reached an external door where a young woman was mopping the entrance way . . .' This essay, set early in my working life when I still wanted to be a social worker, was published in online literary journal Dorothy Parker's Ashes in October 2026. The theme for the issue was failure. Read A Key to the Asylum at https://www.dorothyparkersashes.com/failure/horror-of-horrors.