Prologue
I am the one in the insane asylum, since practically childhood, hearing voices in my mind, threatening to tear my mind apart. My parents never really understood it-- saw it as a product of bad parenting. I had a group of friends that didn't really help either, some that were even worse off than I was. They thought I was a prophet of the future, and for a while I fit in. Soon it got so bad that anyone 'normal' could see that there was something wrong. My parents liked to believe that there wasn't anything wrong, because they didn't know how to handle it.
They put me here when the truth became all too real, and there was nothing else that could have been done. Sometimes I vaguely remember sitting in my room, in the corner, laughing hysterically at the voices whispering to me. I had been there for weeks, months-- years now that I really know.
A doctor came in one day, and gave me a way out, 'a new cure' as he had put it. Depending on the point of view. I take it for a cure, unlike many other people.
Anyway, he told me to follow through a wall, but then I was delirious and didn't question or even wonder how odd that was. The wall opened, like some medieval hidden chamber, leading to an untrod hallway. I realized, as soon as the door opened, that I didn't like it-- that there was something eerie. I trusted the doctor anyway because of how kindly he held out his hand, and I took it and followed him down the cavernous hall.
As we went further and further down the hall, the whispers that I heard became screams. I wanted to go back-- they were trapped just like me. I tried to stop, as he pulled me on, his hand now like a steal clamp, as my own mind cackled, whispering 'told you so's. Finally we arrived to the bottom of the steps, my screams with everyone else's, only that they were caged, and I was not.
I finally stopped him because I fell to my knees, clawing his wrists. He cried out angrily, and something large grabs me. A monster so horrible that even my maddened nightmares could not have compared. I screamed, calling out for help, just hoping that it was my mind playing tricks on my mind again. My words were incoherent words again, a different language because no one listened. But I knew that they were words because they meant something to me: help.
It's just a dream, I told myself. A dream. My mind had become this-- the things I saw were too horrible to be real. Life wasn't like this-- couldn't have been.
My body shuts down, and I knew nothing more of the monster carrying me, the screaming far away whispers again.