The walls are always closing in. They keep coming, constantly approaching, yet they never move. Nothing moves. The light travels across the floor, but it never changes its course, always filtered through layers of dust and glass and cold, sterilized air. It is blue and grey and dark, like everything in here. The door opens daily, for food, for medication, for washing, but it never moves. She never moves.
The silence should be deafening, it would fit. It isn't, though. She can hear foot steps, both from outside, muffled by the thick glass, and from the corridors of the hospital. There are no happy gaits in this hospital, always shuffling, or brisk and unenthusiastic walking. The Mayor, when she comes, is a foreboding clacking of heels upon the sterile tiles. She announces herself, wants the patient to know she is coming. It always succeeds. She never moves either. She stares, she smirks and she leaves. She comes to check up on her poor little patient, locked up for her own good. The patient doesn't mind, she can't mind.
There is much she can't do. She can't remember, can't think. The chemicals are playing in her brain, shutting down neurotransmitters and blocking minuscule paths from sending their signals. Shutting down all emotions, all her thoughts. Allowing her no time to reflect upon herself, or on any past she may have had. She doesn't, though. Have a past, have a life or memories. If she were able to think straight she would find it odd.
She sits in that room, that cell. Every day, the whole day. They pile up. Had she noted each by a dot on the wall, her room would be black. She never moves. Sometimes she peers out of the window, but it faces a wall half a yard away. No one will ever see her through there, and she will never see anyone. For all she knows, she never has. Every day of her life spent in one room. Her very existence locked up.
–
The soft thunk of wood hitting the ground follows him wherever he goes. A cruel joke, a reminder of who he used to be. Not only before, but in the beginning. Physical weakness, as if that is what pained him. As if anything could pain him like- No. Nothing could. Nothing will. He shoves the thoughts deep into the recesses of his mind, trying to lock them up. It works, for the moment. Allows him to concentrate on his business, his dealings. He runs the town, everyone knows he does. She knows, but fails to acknowledge. He is the one in power, he is the one with the gold, so to speak. The faint hint of a bitter grin crosses his face slowly, fading into a forced neutrality. It wouldn't to do be seen grinning at nothing, now would it? Might lose all that wonderful fear induced power. All that glittering gold that has brought so much happiness. Oh, that wouldn't do at all. He hobbles on down the main street, face politely blank, cane crushing pieces of gravel harshly against the pavement.
He passes by the hospital, glances at it, taking in the austere façade, the gloomy windows. The place that makes people better. They couldn't if they had magic. Nothing in this world can ever be repaired, never properly. Scars always exist to grace the whole. Thick, lumpy and ugly scars. His heart is covered in them. Seams where knife wounds have been inexpertly bound, never allowed to heal. He shakes the thought. There is no point in dwelling, he tells himself. It will do no good. But then he has never been known for his rationality.
Blue eyes dance before his, fleeting ghosts of memory superimposed on a slate coloured sky. The magpies that flutter up into the skies mar the phantoms of another world with their slicing wings and ravenous beaks, tearing at the memories still remaining to him. He wishes he could summon lightning to shoot them down, tear their wings from the tiny bodies, beat them until nothing remains. He wishes he could grab the bastard, that thing not fit to be called a man, who beat his daughter until there was nothing left. Wishes he could pick up his cane and bring it down on the head of the unworthy scum who spoiled, who broke, who killed his beauty. The man here may know nothing of his crimes, but that makes him no less guilty, no less the monster who killed the only good thing in this or any other world. No less of a monster than himself.
The monster passes the hospitals walls, his shadow falling softly down them in the faint light. It passes though the cell below for a moment, faint and unclear. But the patient senses something. Something moved.