Be warned that this story contains instances of implied torture, psychological abuse, and mentions of mental illnesses.
"Tell me about your parents."
The young girl, Alice, seemed to be caught off guard by the request. She was a small thing, about eighteen years of age, with strawberry-blonde hair and freckles. Her head lolled back against the armchair momentarily, her hands gripping the rests hard enough that the leather creaked.
"Hmm ..." she hummed, her eyes flitting this way and that. It was one of her most common responses, one barely ever followed up by an actual answer. "Hmmmm …"
Melanie tried again.
"Do you remember your mother?"
That seemed to evoke a response, if but small. Alice's eyes suddenly swivelled back to fix upon the older woman sat before her, but then she looked away again as if disappointed by what she found. Restraining a sigh, Melanie watched as the girl slowly stood up and became fixated on one of the lamps on the wall, her small hands rising to touch the warm, round casing. The bulb was prone to flicker, and it did so quite suddenly, flashing white hues across Alice's face.
The only reason Melanie didn't have the bulb changed was because her patient seemed to find comfort in the way it sometimes flickered on and off. Now, oddly, the therapist found some comfort in it, too, and it took her a moment to pull her gaze away from the hypnotising flashing.
The silence stretched on. The session was due to be concluded, and once again, no information of use had been gained and no progress achieved. It felt like walking into a wall over and over again with no way up or around it; it was just a thick, brick wall that stretched on and on with no end in sight, no cracks to push through.
Rising, the therapist placed her clipboard down onto her desk and moved to spray her pot plants with some water after realising she had forgotten to do it in the morning. Once they had been carefully tended to, she turned and was surprised to find the girl watching her curiously, momentarily distracted away from the flickering bulb.
With a small smile, Melanie offered her the spray bottle.
"Would you like to water them?"
Pleased when Alice tentatively accepted the water, the therapist leant back against her desk and watched the girl spray the brightly coloured petals. It was done with apparently joy, and it was the first time Melanie had actually seen any of her patients smile. Usually, they were far too out of it to consider the things that would bring them some happiness, but rules were rules, and they had to take their medication when specified.
It must have been getting close to the time Alice took her pills.
"Do you remember your mother?" Melanie asked again, picking up her clipboard to hastily write some notes.
"I don't need to remember," came the quiet response. "I see her."
"Where do you see her?"
There was a pause, during which Alice very carefully felt one of the moist petals with the tip of her finger. Then, she leaned in to softly inhale the scent of the plant, her eyes fluttering shut.
"I see her when I dream, but I'm not really dreaming. The light takes me. She gardens a lot, plants flowers. I used to look after the garden."
The lamp flickered again.
"We often dream of the people we long to see, Miss Stone."
When Alice turned, she didn't have her own face.
Instead, she looked like an eighteen year old Melanie, down to the sharp nose and light, clever eyes. Instead of being frightened by the sight, Melanie felt oddly comforted by it, because suddenly she could see everything that Alice had seen in her dreams: the light, a soft voice calling her, a garden – and there was her mother, sadly pruning a rose. Then, there was the ocean, glittering with white light and blessed with pure silence.
Melanie opened her eyes. She was stood now where Alice had been stood moments before, spray bottle in hand. Turning to the flowers, she began to water them again, intrigued by the presence that she could feel behind her but too distracted to actually turn around and acknowledge it.
Water them too much and you'll drown them, the presence said.
"I won't," she replied absent-mindedly.
Why?
"I love them."
I don't think this is the place for you.
Melanie turned abruptly, facing the flickering lamp against the wall. The bulb resumed its steady glow upon receiving her fierce gaze, but she knew that the light was still watching her because she could feel it deep in her chest. Alice's gift, after all, was to feel the emotions of others within her own heart to the extent she cried their tears and loved their kin. She could even invite others to feel her own pain.
"This isn't the place for anybody," Melanie insisted. "For example: I was just having a session with a patient but now she's gone and I can see her memories."
Oh, sorry. Things are a bit jumbled up on my end.
"They're jumbled up on this end, too."
Yes, because they're jumbled up on my end. The part where she had your face was kind of cool, though, wasn't it? I hope you'll forgive me for completely interrupting one of your … hm, riveting dreams, but …
Melanie found herself smiling. Turning back to the flowers, she began carefully arranging them.
"What could a talking lamp possibly want from me?"
I might be a talking lamp but it's a bit rude to just point it out like that, you know. Well, if you're going to nurture those flowers until they're dead, maybe you can do a mere lamp a favour.
Melanie woke up before she could find out what came next.
When they had told her 'special cases', Melanie thought she knew what she was to expect.
Troubled people. Violent. Her speciality, young as she was, was to deal with the people deemed special cases in a range of approaches with the intention on easing them into a calmer behavioural pattern. As such, she rarely remained in one institution for long, instead imparting her techniques on patient and therapist alike before moving on to the next job. This time, she had been informed that her position was to be rather more permanent.
The special cases of the special cases then, she assumed, and perhaps that assumption had been correct in its own way.
The facility was stooped in secrecy. She had been blindfolded before being driven to her new location of work, and with her new paycheck, she was certain not to question it, believing that the patients had been deemed such a threat to society that even the facility workers weren't allowed to know the location of the place in case it was discovered by untrained personnel. She didn't question the coded metal doors that were twice as thick as herself, though her resilience faltered a little upon being told that there were several areas of the facility that even she didn't have clearance for.
Clearance? They were a team of therapists, psychologists, nurses, and directors. They all strove for the recovery and well-being of their patients, and achieving that required a great deal of teamwork. At least, that's how it had been in her previous locations of work. Here, she and her colleagues apparently possessed various levels of rank, and one's rank would often determine whether their swipe card would grant them access to the mysterious rooms beyond. People of different rank didn't often communicate.
As it was, Melanie seemed to have come in at the bottom of the ladder. Already suspect regarding the facility's manner of operation, she was told more than once on her first day to keep her head down. Talk to the patients, accumulate records, then go back to the small staff quarters to sleep. If there was any true intention of actually helping the patients, Melanie was yet to see any evidence of it.
The patients were troubled, certainly, but they weren't violent. In fact, they didn't seem much different to the men and women she had dealt with in the past. The biggest issue was that none of them seemed to know where they were or even knew their own names, but that wasn't due to their condition. It was because they were so drugged up that Melanie couldn't gather any kind of useful information from them, and she certainly couldn't help them. They all stared at her blankly, fell asleep, or asked her where they were.
Her resolve faltered more and more as the days went on. Government officials visited frequently, but she was never told why.
Sometimes, patients were taken away and they never came back. Recovery, they called it, but Melanie suspected otherwise. She knew the proper protocol to introduce a patient back to the outside world, and this institution was taking no notice of it. In addition, with no progress to her name since her employment, she began to wonder just what her role actually was in the scheme of things. Was her job really to provide therapy or was it to provide an image of a functioning facility?
One morning, she was sat at her desk between sessions, mindlessly gazing out of her window at the spruce trees beyond. On the sill sat pots of various sizes, but none of the flowers within had flowered yet due to the cold. Indeed, they seemed to be struggling to keep from wilting, so Melanie sprayed them with water every day to keep them alive. It was the most that she could do.
Somewhat forlornly, the woman flipped slowly through the files of patients that had since been removed from the facility. Their photographs were attached with paper clips, but Melanie didn't look upon them for too long, for it conjured a rather harrowing sensation within her chest. That dull, blank look that all of them possessed inspired feelings of guilt within Melanie that she couldn't quite explain.
Most of the patients were young adults, around the same age as her. Others were barely old enough to be considered adults. Those who had been taken away were, oddly enough, those who had achieved the age of twenty-seven, as their release dates matched with their birthdays.
Sophia. Bronwyn. Milo. Stanley. All of them had been removed, and none of them had ever shown signs of improvement. All of them had been predisposed to delusion, so their files said, the belief that they were capable of things greater than what any human could reasonably achieve. It was a symptom typical of schizophrenia and other mental disorders, but their files were so absolutely identical that it was almost as if somebody had printed off the same information for all of them. Disorders of the mind could be similar, yes, but they were also characterised by individuality, which made them sometimes difficult to diagnose.
She was supposed to be archiving the files, but she couldn't bring herself to do it. It felt like she was giving up on the four she had lost, even if there was nothing that she could do to help them without earning the suspicion of her superiors.
With a sigh, she opened her top drawer to stash them away, though paused when it proved too small to contain them. She pulled open the bottom one with the tip of her shoe, instead, only to find that there was a file already inside. Had she put it there? Or had the therapist that once occupied her position left it there without archiving it?
This one had a dusty 'CLASSIFIED' stamped on the front.
Placing the others back down, she retrieved the new file and wiped the dust off the cover before gently prying it open. It was stacked to the brim with untidily organised papers indicating some sort of test results, but Melanie couldn't make head nor tail of what the information was supposed to be showing. Underneath the pile was a small bit of information and a single photograph.
She wasn't supposed to be reading classified information. She didn't have clearance for the higher-level patients yet. She wasn't even allowed into the wards that contained them. Regardless, she read on, fuelled by frustration and a willingness to be of some use.
Oliver Anthony Bird. Glancing at the photograph, she saw a young man with olive skin and pitch-black hair.
Notes:
This individual is BOTHERSOME and should be contained at all times. Access restricted to higher-level personnel. BOTHERSOME patients should be kept heavily sedated until requested otherwise by authorised DOCTORS. If consciousness is required, have a nurse on standby armed with sedation, and have the patient linked to a MAGIC MACHINE in case of defiance.
BOTHERSOME patients are a threat to society and must not be allowed outside of the premises by order of DOCTORS.
Going by the man's date of birth, he was due to be removed from the facility in little under a month.
There was nothing she could do about it.
Melanie felt highly uncomfortable from then onwards. It wasn't just because she had no idea where the patients were being carted off to when they were taken away, though that was a decent portion of it. No, she just couldn't shake the feeling that she was being watched by somebody. She had no doubt that she was being observed from a distance by a number of her colleagues, those likely assigned to protecting the secrecy of the place, but that thought didn't discomfort her like it did now. Perhaps it was because she knew she had read too much, censored as the information was. She was in good mind to take the file of this Oliver Bird and burn it.
She wasn't allowed matches, though, or anything that could potentially start a fire. She dreaded the thought of even tearing the file up. What if somebody found it and reported her? Would she be taken away like the others?
Melanie simply resorted to doing what the others did. She kept her head down and carried out the pointless conversations with her patients, her heart beating fast with anxiety whenever somebody knocked on her door. Sometimes, she thought she was being completely idiotic and almost delusional, but she was right, wasn't she? The institution wasn't normal and she often got the feeling that the patients weren't there to be helped at all. Rather, they seemed to be waiting for something, but none of them actually knew what it was.
It wasn't any of her business.
It was two weeks into her employment. Nothing had changed.
Lingering at the reception (a fake one, if anything, because the patients didn't have visitors), Melanie was gathering up some paperwork when she spotted movement in the corner of her eye. Beneath one of the white-blue lamps that lined the smooth, flawless walls, stood Alice, her eyes wide as she stared towards the therapist. Melanie dropped her paperwork and cautiously approached the corridor the girl was hiding in.
Alice smiled suddenly, then turned and ran away.
"Wait!" Melanie called. Startled, she headed off after the girl, wondering how she possibly could have escaped from her room seeing as the patients spent most of their time behind a locked door. Following Alice along various identical corridors and up a flight of stairs, she suddenly found herself face to face with a round, metal door guarded by two men and a lock only an authorised swipe card could open.
The two men, both wearing armoured black suits, immediately halted her.
"Do you have clearance?" one asked, immediately reaching for the swipe card hanging around Melanie's neck.
She instantly took a step back, turning this way and that in search of the girl she was certain she had just seen racing down towards the door.
"Did you see Alice pass here? She's escaped her room. I need to take her back before she hurts herself."
The two men glanced at each other warily.
"There aren't any patients called Alice," the other said, eyes narrowing. "Are you all right, lady?"
"No, no, Alice is the name of that ghost, remember?" the first man chortled idiotically. "The rumour the patients started. Beware corridor B-12 'n all that, remember? Very funny, lady."
Melanie felt a horrid chill race up her spine. Confused, she watched the two guards in silence, mouth open in surprise.
"No, no, there was a patient called Alice, but she recovered years ago," the second man reminded them. "Apparently, she never left! Are you sure you didn't just read an old file, ma'am?"
"A girl ran this way. I saw her," Melanie insisted. "She was blonde with freckles -"
She stopped, but not because either of the men had indicated for her to do so. In actuality, it was because she had just spotted something even more unusual than a patient out of their room. A white rabbit was hopping along by her feet without a care in the world, and it was at that point she was certain that somebody was messing with her. Alice? White rabbits? Somebody with a wicked sense of humour was trying to get her attention and it was certainly working.
Alice in Wonderland was her favourite childhood book.
The rabbit sniffed at the air a few times before darting off towards the metal door. It melted into it like a ghost, inviting her to follow, but she couldn't. Not only did she not have clearance, she was also terrified by what she had just seen, as one might expect. This place, this monstrous facility was beginning to drive her mad, she was sure of it.
"I just saw -" she began, then stopped to swallow thickly. What was the use? Neither of the two guards were going to believe her, and she didn't particularly want to be locked up as a patient in this certified hell-hole.
Strangely enough, the guards sobered at her obvious distress. The first turned to the second and offered a short nod.
"Get in there and sort it out."
Melanie vacated before she could be accused of attempting to breach a classified location. Shaken by what she had seen, she strode as quickly as her heels would allow back to the lower levels and headed straight for the archiving rooms under the pretence that she was going to stash away the files of the 'recovered' patients at long last.
The room was small, dingy, and smelt of moist paper. Seizing box after box from the racking, Melanie searched frantically for a patient that went by the name of Alice, but the files were archived by surnames which made everything all the more difficult. Venturing to those that had been stored away a few years previously, she eventually stumbled across a girl of the specified name and pulled the file out, flipping it open to gaze upon the photograph inside.
Blonde hair, freckles, doe-like eyes. It was the Alice she was certain she had been talking to in sessions, but according to the sheet in front of her, the girl had been taken away from the institution three years ago to meet a fate unknown, and it had happened when she was eighteen, not the usual twenty-seven.
The dim light over her head started flickering.
Struck with a sudden terror, Melanie threw the file down and swiftly exited the room, only to find that all of the lights in the facility were flashing as if there had been a sudden burst of electricity. Disorientated and confused, the therapist ran back to the reception and was somewhat relieved to find that she wasn't alone in this nightmare, that other people could actually see what was going on. Nurses stopped what they were doing and looked up at the lights, completely bewildered, the blue-white glow flashing on and off in their eyes as they stared.
The sprinkler system switched on. Alarms started sounding. The screen the receptionist stared at all day was flickering. Before anybody could make sense of anything, men in armoured black suits charged in perfect formation into the facility and towards where Alice and the white rabbit had led Melanie.
"It's a false alarm!" one of them insisted as they went. "Go and make sure the patients are all kept calm or sedated!"
So, that's what they did. No questions asked.
Melanie lingered back and rubbed anxiously on her lower lip as she watched nurses scrambling this way and that, their manner as unprofessional as it was suspicious.
"Are you enjoying your stay here?"
The lamp sat opposite Melanie in the squeaky leather armchair buzzed thoughtfully. It was an extravagant thing, covered in decorative gold and purple swirls, and the shade was patterned with glittery embroidery. A blue-white light shone cleanly from the small ornament, even though its plug wasn't actually connected to any sort of mains. It was pretty to look at, but it proved trickier than her other patients, and she couldn't quite put her finger on why.
Oh, am I really a lamp again? This is humiliating.
Melanie sighed and began doodling a flower on the corner of the clipboard on her lap.
"Are you comfortable here?"
A pause. The brief silence was stolen by the grandfather clock, which chimed a number of chimes indicating that it was morning. It was odd because this particular session always took place at night, and yet the sun was shining outside, birds were singing, so she was forced to assume she had simply made some alterations and forgotten them.
Are you?
"We're not here to talk about me, Mister Bird."
Au contraire, Miss Stone. I have a lot to tell you. Now, I'd offer you a drink, but I've found myself in a rather unfortunate circumstance – Well, a few, actually, but the one that springs to mind as of this moment is that I currently don't possess any number of hands. I don't possess much of anything right now, actually.
Melanie began shading in the petals of her little masterpiece, pulling a slight face of concentration as she did.
"A temporary hurdle, Oliver. You know as well as I that you can overcome it."
With your help, maybe. There's a boy at the end of corridor 12-A. God, what's his name? Autonomy? Lobotomy? Ugh, whatever, just give him the file you found in your desk and he can show you something, but you'll need to make sure he skips his meds. I'd show you myself, but right now I'm, uh … a broken lamp.
She stirred.
Wait! Before you go …
Did I ever tell you the tale of the Four Dragons?
Melanie woke up before she could hear it.