(This is an experimental piece that I wrote to try out some new ideas. It's mostly inspired from One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest by Ken Kesey, and includes a few names and concepts from the novel. Though this story defers heavily, and is by no means a crossover.)
I see them go by. Dressed in their white lab coats, happily taking puffs from their tobacco filled pipes. They leave a trail of yellow smoke in the hall as they continue to giggle and laugh. Ice cold stethoscopes dangle from their necks, occasionally banging against their heartless chests.
I watch them stop; see as they turn their attention to some poor pony that was banging his head against the wall. They look at him like he's an insect; a rat, a pest.
"Ah Mr. Sefelt, what did we say about leaving the main ward? You must stay under the watchful eyes of the nurses and your fellow patients if you are to get any better."
"I… I…" I watch as his eyes bulge, his lip curls and he looks on the verge of tears.
He crawls away from them, skittering like a spider across the spotless floors. The doctor who spoke grinned, like an animal having cornered its prey.
"It's alright Mr. Sefelt, just come with us and everything will be fine."
Sefelt does everything he can to get away from them and their grubby hooves, but eventually it's all for nothing. In the end they always win, there's no beating them. They grab him and lead him down the hall, out of my sight.
I breathe a sigh of relief as I push open the door and step out into the bright hall. Everything's so white and bright it's blinding, they took the color out of the building a long time ago, so the patient's wouldn't imagine nothing. Made them easier to operate and implement on. They had us all right in their hooves. Ready to be molded and shaped however they saw fit.
I finally hear their hoofsteps stop; the place is dead quiet except for the silent hum of machinery. Occasionally there's the odd scream of some poor soul, but other than that it's quiet.
I slowly pace down the hall, keeping my ears open for the devils dressed in white. I didn't want to go back to the main ward, where they could watch and observe you. Pounce on you at just the slightest sign of rebellion. That's where they had you, where they could control and operate you in any which way they pleased.
I hear a door open at the end of the hallway and I rush through the nearest door as quick as I can. It's dark, too dark to see. But I can smell the stale smoke; the doctor's were going by again. I take a deep breath and keep as quiet as I can, quieter than the dead nights back at the farm when all I heard was the sound of crickets. When all you could see was the dark sky and its millions of shinning dots.
I can feel myself choking; can see the yellow smoke roll in under the door. Within seconds the room is already filled and my eyes are going glossy. My lungs are on fire and I can hardly breath, though I can't scream or nothing. Like somepony had a fierce grip on my neck. I feel myself slipping away as the sound of machinery grew louder.
Suddenly I can breathe again. The smoke disappears and I can no longer hear the doctors and their snide comments. I start going back to my regular breathing and silently sigh. I decide the dark room I'm in is probably the safest place to hide, so I slouch down against the door and sigh.
Most ponies would call me crazy, but I swear everything that happened in this place was real, or at least real enough to me.
I been here a long time, longer than any of the other patients. I've seen all sorts of crazy ponies, but this place don't fix them. Sure, they say they medicate and fix whatever's wrong with you, but they don't really fix you. This place is just one of the Combine's thousands of operations; they got them all over the country. Places where they can get in and control you, 'fix' you so you can fit in the machine like a well oiled cog.
Most ponies have no idea they even exist, but that's because they been blinded from reality. Kept hidden and locked away from the truth. But I saw, I saw the Combine and it's impossibly long reaching hooves.
I wait in the darkness for a long time, before finally somepony pushes open the door I been leaning against and I fall flat against the floor. Light pours into the room, letting me know I been hiding in a cramped storage closet.
"Mr. Demens, how many times must we tell you? Your time in the main ward is therapeutic and works towards making you better, sneaking off and sulking in closets isn't going to help." A unicorn mare with a long blonde mane tells me. She's dressed in white, like the doctor's, but her uniform looks like it's been washed with bleach a dozen times over.
I nod at her and slowly get to me hooves. There's no use fighting, she's got me cornered and there's no way out. They always beat you in the end, just like Sefelt. After awhile I learned to just keep me head low, cause standing up just to get knocked down is a waste of everypony's time.
The nurse leads me down the halls, towards the center of the building where the largest room sat. She was the biggest official around here, and I must of seen her and her pale mane a million times now. She was the Big Nurse; the one in charge of making sure things ran smoothly in this operation. She was tall for a mare, and I felt like a little foal tailing behind her huge, imposing figure.
She's the only pony that's been around here longer than me, no doubt cause the Combine knew how efficiently she worked. Sometimes this place felt like a factory, just making parts for a machine. And she ran it like a factory, keepin' tight schedules and rules.
Eventually we reach the main ward, and with a plastic smile she pushes open the door. Already I spot most of the patients. The group who could actually hold a conversation were talking amongst themselves on one side of the room around a table. The rest, at least twenty of 'em were either confined to tight beds or wandering around in a daze.
The room is filled with the same old grey tables and beds. Some paintings that only looked like squiggles to me hung along the walls. A couple nurses wander around, occasionally checking on some of the patients that needed 'help'.
Ellis, one of the ponies that's gonna be here for the rest of their life, stumbles over to me. He's mumbling something about his father, but I can barely understand what's coming out of his twisted mouth cause he's talking so fast. His lips move in a way I've never seen, and the Big Nurse just smiles at him.
"Mr. Ellis, if there's any problem you're having just write it down in the ledger, we'll discuss it later." She's talking about the book sitting on the desk closest to us; it's already open and has faints scrawls of writing across one page.
Ellis just ignores her and stumbles past us, still mumbling at a speed that's almost hypnotic. The Big Nurse just smiles again before turning to me.
"Now, please insure you stay in this room during the appointed hours Mr. Demens."
I nod at her and she hurries over to the ledger to see what inner thoughts some of the patients may have written. I slowly pace over to the group that's talking and listen quietly to their conversation. There's six of them around the table circular.
"Alright Harding, I'll match your two bits!" A brown stallion with a mess of brown hair declared. I watch the stallion across him deal him a card and he curses.
"Ah, it seems lady luck has refused to smile upon you today, Cheswick." Harding smiles as he collects his money, feeling much bigger than his friends.
"Hey hey, what about my cards?! That's twenty-one right there!" One of the more distressed looking ponies butted in. He's got a short black mane, and he's staring intently at the cards resting only inches from his eyes.
"That's a six and four Martini, look at your damn cards man!" Harding snapped at him, casually shaking his head with a dreary sigh. As he did so he noticed me standing a few feet from their table, and quickly spoke up. "Ah Demens, the Big Nurse catch you yet again?"
I just nodded in response, I didn't talk often. Not to any of the patients or the hospital staff.
"Well how many times ha- Martini, I won, that's my money! You only have ten, I have twenty!" Harding once again snaps at Martini as he reaches his grubby hooves towards the pile of bits he had won.
"Look at the cards, that's an ace and king ain't it?!"
Harding gritted his teeth and after a couple moments of cooling off he smiled. "Once again, that is a six and a four. That adds to ten, not twenty-one."
I can see the cards in front of him clearly, and Harding was right. Though Martini was prone to hallucinations so I'm sure he saw 'em differently. After awhile I finally see him lay his hooves off Harding's money, and merely sits awkwardly at the table staring off into the distance.
"Alright, now let's say we deal another hand?"
I break off from their group and wander across the ward. I can feel the Big Nurse's eyes on me, not only hers but a million other pairs. All watching me. Waiting for me to do something wrong, waiting to fix and put me back together.
But I realized a long time ago that keeping low was the only way to survive. When you were big the Combine saw you, they saw the threat you could be and started right away at breaking you. Bringing you down so you can be just like every other pony. And there was no stopping them; you can only be small or be one of them. You couldn't be big and not be part of them.
I pass a stallion who is repeatedly washing his hooves at a drinking fountain. He's doing it so much the tap breaks, spilling water all over the ward. Water just keeps shooting out of the fountain, turning from clear water to some black sludge. Already it's pushed the furniture against the walls and interrupted the card game. They all shout curses as the ink fades from the cards and they can't tell who's got what.
The Big Nurse enters the room and instantly the water stops, no doubt the machinery responding to her. The water all dries up and she paces to the center, turns to the card players with her plastic smile.
"Excuse me gentlemen, but it is three o'clock and time for the meeting as included in the daily schedule."
Immediately they stop their game and pace over to her. She leads them to the emptiest section of the room and they sit in a neat little circle. I wander over to them and merely watch from outside their circle.
"Now, Mr. Cheswick I believe last meeting we were discussing your previous drinking habits. Do you have anything else to share?" The Big Nurse says after she reads over the book levitating beside her.
"I…" Cheswick's eyes sink into their sockets and he stars down at the white tiled floor. "I…"
"Well, perhaps you should discuss why you drank so heavily? Was there something you were running from?"
"I…" I watch Cheswick breath heavily, like an angry bull that's about to charge. Though he looks more like an injured animal in the woods, just lying around waiting to get eaten by some predator. The Big Nurse continues to peer at him with her piercing gaze.
"Please remember Mr. Cheswick, the purpose of all of this is to get better. This is therapy."
She's beating down on him like the desert sun, and now's she's looking more like a vulture waiting for its prey to die. It looks like Cheswick is about to breakdown.
The Big Nurse sighed before looking back at the ledger. "Well, as somepony has written here, you mentioned that you discovered that your wife was cheating on you prior to this. Was this the reason you drank, Mr. Cheswick?"
Cheswick makes a frustrated face and continues to stare at the floor, occasionally tilting his head and letting out little squeaks. If she keeps pushing him he's gonna explode, I can tell. Then they'll have to scrape him off the walls, and man was that a mess. I seen it before when she's pressed them too hard.
"Did you believe that the alcohol would help you get over this?"
Cheswick starts shaking like a teapot; I can see the steam coming from his ears. She was gonna do it, she was gonna make him snap.
Finally she drops her gaze and just turns back to her book. "Well, I suppose we should move on if you have nothing to say…"
After hearing that Cheswick starts to calm down, though he's still staring at the floor. The Big Nurse's eyes move from him to her next target. The next pony for her to prey on and pick apart.