This is a crossover between Asylum and Freak Show, taking place in 1963. Pepper misses her one and only mother. Sister Jude finds out something about Dr. Arden that she hadn't been bargaining for. Elsa Mars didn't die in 1960. In fact, everything we know of Elsa's life in 1960 didn't happen. She still has her career, she's married to her cheating husband, Michael, and she hasn't met Massimo after Jupiter, Florida.
Asylum was my favourite season, until I saw Freak Show. Now I'm not sure which is my favourite. But as you can imagine, I was over the moon to find the connections between the two seasons. I guessed the identity of Elsa's torturer before Massimo said the name. And I guessed right!
I hope you will enjoy this story of mine, and please leave a review if you do. :)
She had to find it. They tried to hold her back, but she had to find it.
There was always so much dust around here, now the smell of burnt paper struck her nose. Books and magazines were scattered all across the floor and the bookshelves. The desk had been thrown over. She searched the piles of papers, desperately seeking for her treasure. She threw old books at the guards when they tried to approach her.
When they finally managed to take hold of her arms and pull her away from the books, she began to struggle more fiercely than she ever had. There was no escape from punishment now that she had ran off and thrown those books at the guards. But she couldn't leave just yet. They would clean out this room and she would never see it again.
She pressed her hand against her cheek and calmed, the guards pulled her to the door. And that's when she saw it. That little red and white "Life". She cried out in victory. She must have taken the guards by surprise, because they loosened their grip momentarily. And when they did, she lunged forward. Pulling the magazine out from under a large pile of ruined old books, she hugged it tight. She sat down on the floor and pressed her hand against her cheek again. She could almost feel her with her again, and she smiled.
She locked her office door and glanced down at the old film tape in her hands. "The Lucky One, 1932," the label on it read. She set it down on her desk and walked into her room where she kept the movie projector she'd borrowed to show the inmates some pictures to keep them occupied in the evenings. Truth be told, she would have loved to see a talkie instead of those old silent pictures, but that was all they could afford at the moment.
Sister Jude set up the machine, thinking bitterly about her latest sin. "Thou shalt not steal," repeated itself in her mind over and over again. She hadn't enjoyed poking around Dr. Arden's office, but there was something so terribly off about him that Jude just couldn't leave it be. She'd muttered a prayer, entering the doctor's quarters. The eeriness of the place always gave her a bad feeling in her stomach.
Jude brought the film tape into her bedroom where she placed it in the projector. Of all the things she could have chosen from Dr. Arden's office to investigate, her intuition had told her that there was something really important about this old movie. It was the only one she could find amongst his large collection of books.
For some reason, she hesitated a moment before turning the projector on. The film's name should have been a comfort, but it wasn't, not to Sister Jude anyway. The projector cast a light onto the wall opposite of Sister Jude's bed, and the nun sat down to watch.
A beautiful blonde woman appeared on the screen, leaning towards the camera. Jude had thought she'd been beautiful when she was young, but anything she had been could not be compared to this young lady. Her puppy eyes, her full lips, and her perfect face. Jude was quickly distracted by the realization that the woman was sitting on an old bed.
"Nazi blue movies," Sister Jude muttered with disgust, readying herself to switch the projector off if it got too far. A man handed the woman on the screen a drink and she downed it without a thought. Jude had to admit she was a wonderful actress. If she hadn't known better, she'd have thought the woman really was drunk.
The blonde dropped back onto the pillows and said something to someone behind the camera. Jude saw the fear and confusion in the woman's eyes, and an uneasy feeling crept inside of her. The next moment two men on both sides of the blonde took her hands, and Jude noticed for the first time the straps on the bed-frame. The blonde's arms were fastened up without much resistance from the woman. She didn't look so well now. She looked up at the camera-man again, and Jude silently gasped at the feelings she could see in the star's face. There was something horrible about this movie, and although Jude couldn't quite decide what it was yet, it frightened her to no end.
For a moment the woman on the screen looked up at the men surrounding the bed. Jude could see how powerless and frightened she was, and in a terrifying instant she realized this wasn't a scripted piece of film art—this was real. The nun let out a strangled cry of terror when a man on the screen started a chainsaw. Her reaction was met with a tenfold worse one from the woman strapped to the bed. Thank God this wasn't a talkie!
Sister Jude watched, petrified, as the men sawed off the woman's legs one by one, taking their time with the second one. She'd heard of snuff movies but she'd never given them a second thought, or, Heaven forbid, seen one. It was horrible to say the least. She clutched her rosary beads in her hand, unable to look away from the awful picture on the screen.
The woman on the bed struggled and screamed until she ran out of energy and shock took over. Smeared with her own blood, she cried endless tears as the monsters around her packed their things and turned to leave. A tall man bent over the woman, taking hold of her jaw with his hand and telling her something. Then he turned and followed the others. That was the end of the film, the picture of the tortured woman stayed on the screen.
It took Jude a full two minutes to recover, to steady her breathing and feel the dizziness leave her. She never forgot a face. And she never forgot a man's hand when it had touched her. The man had involuntarily shown his face to the camera when he'd left. Jude had been obliged to shake Dr. Arden's hand when they'd met. "Godawful monster," she growled, thinking back to the five missing patients she'd been worrying about these last few months.
To be continued...
