Skaian Institute for the Mentally Insane
-Prologue-
A thin film of red rust clouds the gray of the pipes that connect the sink to the wall, their leaking cracks permitting passage to small drops of water that plink noisily onto the concrete floor. The air was muddied with the harsh scents of antiseptic, sharp cleaning detergent and thick body odor, but you've been here too long to really notice the smell anymore. The only light provided is from three fluorescent rectangles that ride low on the ceiling and flicker every five seconds. It's only a matter of minutes before one sputters and dies out.
You're not worried about it, though. The only things you can see are shadows and slightly whiter shadows; they'd blindfolded you ages ago.
HoNk
Even though you can't see currently, the layout of your room is burned into your memory, being one of the only ones you have. The whole of it was about as big as a shed, if that. The pocket-sized bed crouches low to the ground with a thin mattress and sheets riddled with holes. The toilet's bowl tilts downwards at an awkward angle and there was nothing to wipe your ass with -even if you could wipe on your own. And finally there was the sink, which had been seeping for who knows how long now. It was all cramped and smushed together like a toddler had thrown his toys into a basket at random.
Your feet are planted in the middle of the floor and you stand unsteadily over them, swaying slightly as your weight shifts from foot to foot. You face the only entrance and exit to your room, a bland metal door. Why are you just standing there? You don't know. Don't really care to know. The floor is cold under your bare feet and your arms twitch from inside your straight jacket.
honk
This is stupid. None of that information actually fucking matters. Are you just going to stand there and wait for them to come and torture you some more? They'll motherfucking kill you! Think, dumbass!
You should be figuring out ways to escape and take down anyone who tries to stop you. Mercy is for the weak. Wait for the mother fuckers to come and then jump them before they even suspect it! Arm yourself! ...Rip off the toilet seat and use it as a club against the lab coats... Or tear off a piece of that pipe... No, the one under the other sink in here. Yes that motherfucking sink, idiot! Use your teeth if you have to!
...That's it. There you go. Now we wait for the lab coats to come in with their syringes. But we'll be ready. We'll escape and-
HONK
The voice vacates your mind as abruptly as it had trespassed, and the room suddenly feels deathly silent without it. It takes a moment, but you soon notice a metallic taste mixing with the saliva coating your tongue. Your eyebrows pull together beneath the cloth as you absentmindedly wonder why that taste was suddenly there.
You open your mouth experimentally and a wickedly sharp edge tears a shallow slit across your tongue as the scrap falls out. The piece of metal plummets and pings against the ground a few times before going silent. The bitter, coppery taste of blood left behind isn't exactly foreign to your mouth, but you find that not expecting it is a bit irritating. Like a fly in your periphery that is uncharacteristically careful to never venture too closely into your direct line of sight.
You are soon distracted from your palate as something cold and wet tickles at the tips of your toes. You cock your head to the side, ears picking up the sound of quick-trickling water. Eventually, the cool liquid pools around your feet and you shuffle around a bit, entertained by the splashes your movement causes.
Sooner or later you come to a standstill again and contemplate as to why the pipes were leaking so badly all of a sudden. However, you don't have very long to dwell on it before something else sparks your short attention span. Only this time, it was actually with good reason.
Metal screeches against metal as the deadbolt lock to your room is pulled away from the doorjamb. You instinctively tense up and look straight ahead even though all you can see are the dark figures of the people entering. They walk in without a word directed at you, their voices cheerful and laughing, as though they had merely entered a restaurant to eat lunch. The only things that would have given them away were the nurse's scrubs they donned and the open white lab coats covering their shoulders. Even if you currently couldn't see them, you knew their uniform from many past encounters.
Their footsteps are sloshy and you can tell by their sudden change in tone that they had noticed, and are agitated by the water covering the floor. Their voices are hushed, but irritated and you can't make out what they're saying. Not that you're really trying to anyway. You'd stopped listening for your own sanity.
The two lab coats fall silent and one of them moves behind you. You feel their fingers begin undoing the knot tied at the back of your head. Mutely, you remain standing still, not feeling the immediate need to react. The linen slips away and the sudden light change makes your pupils constrict violently. However, you don't flinch away. Your eyelids lazily fall halfway over your eyes and a distant, dreamy expression dances across your face; as though you had become content.
The voice starts to pester you from the recesses of your mind and the corners of your lips tug downwards. It's a buzzing hum that you can't understand. It confuses you, and you try to block it out with other distractions. Your gaze moves ever so slightly to look at the people in your room.
One of the lab coats is a woman, you notice. She's the one in front of you, running her hands over your neck, shoulders and torso as though she were checking for something. Long black hair swishes and teal eyes flash with concern as she finally peers at your face. You ponder why she was looking at you like that and tilt your head to the side.
The girl's eyes meet yours and their blue-green hues widen a smidge, as though she was surprised by your reaction. She hesitates, opening her mouth slightly, before saying something over your shoulder to the lab coat that had given your sight back. She gives you a long look before her hands leave your shoulders to trail down your forcibly crossed arms.
Her fingers lock around your wrists through the fabric of your straight jacket. The woman's hands are small and warm, but had a grip of iron. The pressure sparks a hint of annoyance that clenches in your gut. A few seconds of tugging here and unbuckling there and you feel the casing come loose.
You mother fucking moron! Now's- You frown again. The voice is becoming a real inconvenience now. Though, its frustration was slowly trickling into your current emotions. Concentration was getting harder to come by. Why are you just standing here again? You don't like how this girl's holding your arms in place... Shouldn't you be doing something? Maybe? Yes? No?
The woman lab coat lets go of your wrists, sliding the straight jacket off of your arms in the process. Your newly-freed limbs fall limply to your sides and you notice how weird it feels to be mobile with them again. The pajama sleeves still encasing your arms flap around uselessly, creases randomly decorating the fabric from being held in place for so long.
The girl quickly hands the straight jacket to the person behind you and then returns to looking you over. Now the woman's hands are massaging and prodding at your appendages. You find it kind of bothersome yet amusing at the same time. Contradictive, but you always are.
The voice is shrieking at you with muffled words now and something it says actually registers in your thoughts. You could make out the words "pipe" and "motherfucker," and that was all; that was enough to draw your attention away from the keepers. Your head slowly turns and tilts downwards. Sure enough, it was right where you'd left it.
The two people spoke very little while the woman finished her examination, and you realize how tense the atmosphere had become in the few minutes the intruders had been in your room. You dwell on it for a few seconds before the train of thought disappears on its own again. That tends to happen to you, in case you hadn't noticed.
A few more pats later and the lab coat was done. She averts her gaze from yours and you furrow your eyebrows, confused at her behavior. The lab coats hardly ever reacted to you, and she had been doing a lot of reacting in the past ten minutes. You decided that it was like she felt guilty for some reason. The girl looks over your shoulder and keeps a soft grasp on your right forearm. She says something to the lab coat behind you.
The next few moments happen very quickly.
A sharp pain shoots across your elbow as your left arm is yanked backward and pinned behind you. Surprised, you involuntarily bend at the waist and stumble forward, but the person's other arm wraps around your torso to hold you upright.
You barely have time to react, when you notice that the girl is wiping some strong smelling anti-bacterial in the crook of your free elbow. Her gaze is on your arm and her fingers grip at your skin uncomfortably. Your eyes widen. She reaches into the side pocket of her lab coat and the hand returns with something cylindrical and shiny and sharp-looking and holy shit she's pointing it at you-
The voice refused to be ignored anymore.
You motherfucking idiot! They're going to stick you with that thing! Move! Movemovemove!
Your body responds immediately while your brain is a bit slower on the uptake. Before you know it, you've yanked both arms free and have lunged for the piece of pipe lying on the wet floor. The entire front of your body gets soaked through your pajamas and half of you wishes you hadn't sprung that leak in the first place. The other half makes your right hand shoot out and close around the six inch triangle of torn metal.
Get up, imbecile!
Obediently, you leap to your feet and face your keepers, who were also staggering upright from your sudden outburst. The rough edges of steel cut into the skin of your palm and a second liquid mixes with the water dripping from the metal's tip.
Get them!
Your fingers tighten further around your small but sufficient weapon. A tiny part of you is uneasy, but its voice is drowned out by the angry booming in your ears that might have been your pulse or the voice humming to you. You couldn't really tell. Meanwhile, the lab coats are turning to face you, shock on their faces and their mounting fear making the air thicker.
Kill them!
You feel your face split open into an expression that you've never made before; and realize that it must have been called "grinning." A sort ofvague excitement makes your dead eyes light up and you bare your teeth at the lab coats. Your gaze locks onto the syringe still grasped in the female lab coat's hand.
Kill them before they motherfucking kill you!
Not that you even needed that stupid excuse.
You walk towards them.
Go down to the end of the hall, turn right and the third door on the left is where you'll find a safe haven. A room totally oblivious to the shocked screams and loud crashes coming from just up the corridor. A room completely separated from the rushed footsteps and desperate bangings on a door that should not have been locked but was. A room belonging to a boy with nothing but a bed, a blanket and five hours left of sleeping to do.
Soft, incoherent murmurings and little huffs of air escape from his slightly parted lips, the only sounds to contrast the chaos outside. His face is relaxed and peaceful as he turns onto his side, dragging the thin blanket in his wake. The bed creaks in protest, but like the noises from a different universe, it does not rouse him from his slumber.
If he'd been awake, you would have had a perfect view of the bluest sapphires ever mined from the earth, both set like crown jewels on either side of his nose. They would be bright and excited pools that held a dark depth to them if you only looked close enough. An unruly shock of black hair frames his face and static from the bed makes it stick up in all directions.
He would have looked just like a normal boy, going to bed at the proper time in order to get up for school in the morning. He would have attended normal classes with normal teachers and normal friends. He would return to a normal household and sleep once again in a normal bed.
However, he was not a normal boy. His gray flannel pajamas and nylon straight jacket spoke words of their own. Not to mention the likes of his neighbors, or his current drug-induced siesta.
Normal boys dream of flying through the clouds and bending the wind to their every whim, no matter how trivial. They dream of playing games with friends and being powerful enough to defeat monsters five times their size. They dream of meeting weird aliens and happily exploring the unknown with caution thrown to the wind.
And yes, this boy dreamed of such things as well.
Only, he actually believed in them.
