Summary: companion pieces.
leeching
they just want to suck you dry -
There are many strange devices in a place like this, all with unique and ingenious methods and uses. Terrible things happen in the half-darkness, and the screams don't even begin to alarm her any more. Doctors can do horrible things to frightened little children in the name of medical science. The good Queen Victoria blessed this prestigious academy and, by doing so, blessed Emily. Emily is a marvel of science, a little medical treasure used for the good of the doctors.
Some girls aren't so lucky. Some of them become hysterical and see ghosts in the cracks in the walls and the doctor's eyes. Some of them can't speak, can only shiver and cry and curl up in the foetal position night after night. Some scream and cry and lash out all night and then they must be silenced permanently (and if they're lucky, it kills them.)
"Don't be scared, little girl," one of the doctors told her generously, flanked by a gruesome-looking scalpel and the benefactor of the young photographer. "If you do as we say, we'll only take a little."
One girl, hollow-eyed and bedraggled, tottering down the hallway flanked by two doctors whose fingers dug sharply into her flesh, turned and her gaze caught Emily's. Her dear little beribboned head jerked and shuddered like a ragdoll as they pulled her down the corner with a sharp tug, and just before she was flung into her cage, a twisted smile tugged on the corners of her lips. That was the only sign of life.
Emily shuddered.
I'm dead, she thought to herself. I'm dead and I'm so cold.
But no, Emily, silly Emily! She wasn't dead. It hadn't worked, she reminded herself, because for her to die would imply the possibility of escape, and there was no way she was leaving the asylum. That was what the piping voices told her in the dark, and whether they were the piteous cries of her fellow inmates or all inside her pretty little head, Emily simply couldn't tell. Not any longer.
She didn't even wince when the leech was readily applied to her arm, not any longer.
insomnia
there is no sleep in a place like this
Every night is full of the echoes of ghosts in the walls and girls who have long since been forgotten and left to rot in their madness – murmurs from the lost minds around her. Emily's every waking moment serves as a reminder of where she is and even in her dreams, she hears the voices.
There is no cure for insanity.
If Emily believed that she was sane, then it must be true that she was steadily losing her sanity, day by day. Why, she didn't even find it strange that the rats had begun to speak to her (she was just grateful for the company), nor that the striped wallpaper seemed to curl and writhe and move, as though the ghosts are trying to break free from their prison and reach her.
She crossed the cell when Flea sat up and began her steady, rhythmic rocking, clutching her knees to her chest as her lithe frame swung as though possessed, her large eyes hollow and vacant, not shining as they usually did in the day. She kissed and consoled Flea, stroking her blonde locks, and in her spare time, she immersed herself in making a new four-cornered hat from the paper Sir Edward brought her when he was able. She aimed to make a hat fit for any pirate captain and one which would certainly befit Jolie Rouge.
Emily no longer finds escape in sleep, and so she doesn't.
Often she will pretend to be asleep when the Captain's eyes search the width of her cell – she curls up on her rust iron bed and thinks about all the things she is going to say when she finally meets Sachiko again, all the things she ought to have written in letters, the sheet music for a particular violin piece, and the mystery behind this place, the place they call the asylum.
But one night she notices Jolie watching her with her mercurial gaze, her eyes glittering with palpable excitement and, undeniably, madness. She doesn't mention it to the girl; doesn't move and doesn't speak. The greasy, nasal voices of Drs Stockill and Greavesly chime down the corridor as they tidy away surgical tools, and she can hear the rough German accent of the Count and sometimes she can even see his cold dead eyes.
She trusts Jolie Rouge, but something in her unsettles her terribly and Emily is grateful when Jolie averts her gaze, and resumes her staring out of the window. Sometimes when she sees that look, Emily is too frightened to have friends.