She had been the sole resident of room 14 of the Endsville Asylum B Ward for four years when I was discharged from duty and could return home, feeling less like the snot-nosed boy quivering in his army greens I was when I left, and more like a man who has been molded into something more.
"She's gone, man. That girl is absolutely batshit insane." One of the caretakers tells me as he was leading me through a confounding maze of hallways, the agonized screams of the real whackos and crazies reverberating off the walls as we went.
"She won't shut up about demons and how the end is near." He says, flailing his arms around like the damn Sophomore he was. When I tell him that I still wanted to see her despite the warnings, he laughs. "Well that's your call, buddy. I'm warning you though - she isn't right in the head. Not by a long shot."
The more time I spent with this guy, the stronger my urge was to shove the knife in my right boot down his goddamn throat, but I took a deep breath and held it in. Be like regular old Billy, I said to myself, don't be I have seen entire fucking villages be blown up and stacks of dead men, women and children tall enough to cast a shadow Billy. Or else they'd lock me away too, and then she wouldn't be the only one up shit creek without a paddle.
"Here's your stop, big fella." The jack ass says as he unlocks the door to Room 13 of Ward B. As he opens it he starts to run through the safety procedures again but I just wave it off and shove past him, which I guess was a fair enough indicator that I wanted him to piss off because he does.
Once the door slams shut behind him, I am left alone with a girl quietly gazing out the loosely barred window.
"I wish I could have come back sooner." I say, although the Mandy I knew was never satisfied with apologies. But, as I looked around the room I wondered just how much these freakin' sociopaths change her over the past nearly half a decade.
Drawings are glued to nearly every wheelchair accessible space on the four walls, all of them featuring pale white skulls against chaotic, colorful backgrounds scribbled out in pen, pencil, crayon, or whatever the heck else she could get her hands on.
She must have known it caught my attention, because the first thing I hear come out of her mouth is an explanation for her sudden artistic inspiration.
"I still see him after all these years." She said as she turned her wheelchair around to look at me, in a voice as weak as she looked: pale, thin, and with rounded stubs where her legs had once been. "I feel him, Billy, and I know you feel him too."
"Yeah, he's growing stronger." I say, and I wasn't lying either. The best way to describe it is like the heat you feel when you stand near an oven, only it was less intense and I felt it throughout my entire body. This sixth sense is what brought me back home, back to her. In a way this shared sense inextricably linked us.
"We have to stop him."
Although as timid looking as a person on the verge of breaking in more ways than one, the confidence in her voice was clear. From our short exchange I already knew we were on the same page, and nothing more had to be discussed about him and our desire for revenge against him.
Him, the hellborn entity that made Mandy like this by taking away her legs and her soul if such a thing exists. Later we could talk about Grim, but for now we would take baby steps in piecing together our shattered lives, even if it was just long enough to retrieve what was lost.
We were going to get back what Grim stole from us.
I take off my sunglasses and look into her sunken black eyes. They still possessed the same dark and very Mandy allure they did when I last saw her. "First things first, I'm breaking you out of this hellhole." I said, and God help whoever would dare get in our way.