There was a small girl, and her name was Annabelle Wayne.
Annabelle Wayne was a bright, fragile girl. Energetic, sometimes broken like a small piece of glass. Her parents always carefully picked up her pieces, hoping that their little girl can be happy again. And she is the next day. Just the small plight of sorrow had to be dealt with, to suffer, so she can live higher the next time. You had to be on the bottom of the ground before you could ever wish to fly.
Annabelle Wayne never had many friends, and even with the few friends she had, they would soon disappear in her grasp, like small eaves of dust in the wind. She wished that one day, she could have a friend with her forever, a friend who could listen to her, love her, and not disappear when she hugged them. Many of her friends did that. They never seemed to want to be hugged forever by the small, angelic Annabelle Wayne. No one seemed to want to stay in her grasp forever. The small grains of sand that would disappear between her fingers, they always somehow got away. And when they got away, she cried those loose, crystal tears her parents always feared. And she wished she had a friend who could store them for her, inside his heart that seemed to have always been full of fibers that glowed.
Annabelle Wayne lived in her parent's mansion. Her parents were rich, never suffering from the hard times, but yet despite everything they gave to Annabelle Wayne, she always seemed to want more. Annabelle Wayne wasn't greedy, but she wanted something that could last her a long time, not the latest iPod, not the latest computer she could use to keep herself occupied from the fact that no one seemed to want to play with her, but something that would always be inside her, something she could remember that she was loved in this world, something that could keep her safe in her mind that seemed, to her, be riddled with disease.
Annabelle Wayne was smart, but she could never find out the riddle to her brain. It always seemed to go out like a small flicker of a flame that died away. She wanted something that could last a long time, she claimed. She wanted, above anything, perfect mental health. But she thought as long as she could live, as long as the pills they gave her seemed to give her these undesirable side effects, she could never escape from the wrath of her mind, of her imagination, and she wondered, oh so wondered, if there would be a friend who could tell her, oh so gently, that there was something special in her mind, that she was wanted in the world, despite her faults.
They told her she was creative, but she wished, so much, just to be normal! Just to be a regular person! Without the mind aches and the guttural pain the medicine brought, with her mouth always seaming loose rhymes and her fingers always in strange formations and her feet always moving and her hands always washed and her eyes always seeing the apparitions, she wished, once and for all, that she wasn't insane, but normal! Not special, like her parents kept telling her! Normal! The girl has lived for so long in the Terre Haute Asylum for the Mentally Ill, and she felt alone, that she was the only child in a world full of adults who lost their vision, their eyes to see the world. Sometimes to her the world was so much more vivid, so much more dull, and she wished it would be vivid all the time, the textures more soothing to her, the voices louder than whispers! She wished so much to be loved, to be liked, other than the woman nurses who she thought was supposed to put up with her, but she was in the quietest vault of Indiana, the quietest place in the world where not even the silence could be pierced by a scream. The silence was louder than a scream. It would get nowhere. It would get to no one. And Annabelle Wayne, she wished she could be heard, she wished she could be seen to anyone other than her parents, other than the other patients who these cruel people have called "loons", she wished she could be heard all over the world, her small little fingers to be touched, her blue eyes to be seen, and her golden locks to be admired. But no one, in all the world, has heard of Annabelle Wayne, and all her troubles. She was quiet in the quietest vault in Indiana, and alone.
The nurses have told her about God, but she didn't believe in him. She thought he must've been a tyrant who only wanted to punish people with these diseases, with his voice that was as sharp as a lightning bolt in the sky, and they told her that when she had troubles, she could pray to him, and he could try to answer her prayers. But she never believed that he could help her. He only wanted to see her suffer. After all, that was why she was here. Sick. Sick with her heart disease that she soon came to believe instead of her brain being diseased, and very soon, she thought she lived in a regular hospital like everyone else, and it comforted her to know she wasn't insane, that her other loons weren't insane but just physically ill, and the nurses with their needles so long and slender, their silhouettes like small little white shadows of long thin cut paper, they gave them medicine to lower their stress so their hearts wouldn't break. Their hearts, so fragile, so little. She came to believe they were born with small hearts, cowardly hearts, and the world has scared them too much, which is why they were here, in this small little white asylum that was the same color as milk, the same liquid used to give to feeble kittens. They were the kittens, wanting to be treated of their hearts, and the medicine, sometimes it made them dumb and dull, sometimes it made them gray into the shadows that cut across the milky halls, as the men drooled on the hearts and spades, as their hands always shook with vigor, as their hearts barely trembled inside them, barely made a sound, as the nurse came in again, her red smile so luminescent in the snowy halls of the battered and weak-willed. She imagined her lips as a bleeding heart, so bloody that she wished it would pull away and kiss someone else with the mark of death, with the stench smelling with ripe bellies opening and the flies sucking on their juices.
She remembered she spent so much time in this hospital that she barely remembered it was near Christmas, and because her heart caused her to be on watch again (oh her heart, always causing her to do such caustic, acidic things to the sweet little nurses, their fairy wings being ripped by her nymph-like hands!), which meant she couldn't see her parents. She barely remembered their faces. They were like blurry pictures to her, little fuzzballs in her hand. While they usually made her smile as they tickled her face, these ones did not, and caused her little heart to beat rapidly again.
The shadows were like long claws, long hooks, ready to bleed into her white silky body.
"It's nearly Christmas, my sick little turkeys and loons, and it's time to open up your presents. These came from your parents, your friends, your other family, and some may have been donated. Only a few of you weren't such little shits that you got the donated presents, which means you, little Annabelle Wayne, you got a present from an anonymous source. I know that girl who gave you your present. She had long brown hair and those hazel eyes that are always filled with lies. She was a real spectre, a real demon from Hell, and you shouldn't open your present too fast, it can make your heart beat too fast. And we don't want you in the Safety Room, do we, little Annabelle?"
She wasn't sure of what she was speaking. It was fast, her words flowing from her breath like long silky snakes, and she thought she heard her say that there was a present from a girl, a girl who possibly felt sorry for her. Maybe a friend, maybe someone who wanted to harm her, bringing a bomb in the hospital. It was possible. She saw white knifed powder that cut and sawed through people's noses and pills that were long white blades that scarred people's throats. And they were forbidden. The nurses kept checking their presents, but sometimes a few harmful ones went through, but young Annabelle Wayne thought in her glass heart that maybe, this one wasn't harmful, but would bring her a new world of hope, a new life in her decaying one.
Of course, her presents from her parents were things she couldn't have in the hospital with her. New electronics. But Annabelle Wayne didn't want that. She wanted something that truly came from their soul, not something to appease her, to promise her what she can have when she would come out of the ward. Because as she thought and thought in her brain that she thought could be as weak as her heart, it might not happen. She could be trapped here forever, in her own little steel-wired prison. She gazed at the windows through the black bars and saw that the sun was bright, white, and everything it touched it gave joy. But the sun was too far away, the bars were there so the sun couldn't come into their ward. The sun was forbidden, she thought. It gave too much excitement in their hearts. So the nurses tried to seal it away. But she could still see it behind the blinds, and oh how much she craved it, how she wished to have some of it on her tongue! She wished she could touch the flowers and feel their fibrous petals and stems, she wished she could see animals and pet their luxurious fur, she wished she could talk to people who understood words and names, and she wished she could travel to places, oh how much the sun promised her what she could have once she got out! Oh how much she wished for it! But she had to stay here. She had to lie in the darkness, in the silent asylum, to have no one hear her voice, her name, nothing about her was known to the world. She wished she could have the world notice her, she wished she could touch all the beautiful things and love them in a life full of love and happiness, but she felt her life was dead, sad, and blue and black.
The present from the one who felt sorry for her. Yes, that present. She couldn't have too much excitement, she told herself. But she held her breath and opened it, and she found a note, and something that she had to hold her heart inside her ribcage, because it did brought her joy, it brought her a little bit of the sunshine that was hidden away by the sheets that ate the light in their fibrous throats.
The note said, written in a lovely, beauteous scrawl:
To the little girl in the ward,
May you find him a big help. He was, during all of my troubled times. He helped me get past all the evil and woe, and I was able to see the light. He was my best friend, and maybe he will be yours.
His name is Sonic.
Her heart found exuberance in his appearance. The quills that shone like the sunlight she loved on the windowsill, reflecting the vast deep ocean that she always wanted to travel to, the jade eyes that brought upon wishes and promises granted in her soul, that she will be okay, that one day she will be out of the ward, happy and free. His smile, too, was bright, brighter than the sun and the stars, and she wished that all the other nurses could see it, that this Sonic was her own sunshine, her own freedom from this cell, her own friend she could love forever in her arms and never let go, someone who could listen to her, and most of all, he was a friend who could love her back. Most of her other friends never did that. They always never appreciated how her heart, even though it was weak, could be so big. And Annabelle Wayne hugged him into her arms, her tears being wiped by his fur, feeling so smooth on her cheeks.
"Annabelle Wayne, is that what our donor has sent you? A plush toy? We don't know if we would let you have that, young lady. The ones whose hearts are constantly on fire would want to burn it. Or harm it. Or steal it. Those who just don't have their hearts screwed on the right way would want to hurt your prickly friend. We think you can only have it once you leave the hospital."
She held Sonic tightly against her chest, wishing that he could come to life, tell the nurses no, that she wishes he could stay with her forever and always, and as his chest was brushed against hers, she thought she could feel a strong, shining heartbeat inside him thrumming, like small, smooth fingers stroking her, and as she talked to the nurses, she could swear that right when he was in her arms, he was alive, and wanted to love her.
"No…I want Sonic. Please don't take him away Miss Gertrude, I swear that I won't let the pyros near him, or the kleptos, or the socios. I swear that he will be my friend, and that he can make me happy. Isn't that why the girl sent him to me? Isn't that why he's here for me?"
The nurses, like long, white, unmoving needles, began conversing with each other, claiming that the little girl didn't need a friend, that she needed more "therapy", more "medication" before she could have a friend. But as they clamored, they thought that maybe the girl would benefit from having a stuffed animal to sleep with, as they noticed that little Annabelle Wayne couldn't sleep very well at night, because often she had cramps of these feelings known as "loneliness" and "guilt" and that maybe if she could vent to the stuffed animal, it could be beneficial to her "treatment". So the nurses, the long white poles like the long white sticks of cigarettes, they said that yes, she could keep Sonic, as long as the pyros and the kleptos and the socios couldn't get him, and that she was allowed to sleep with him every night, but couldn't have him during group, as she needed to focus on herself and not her toy. And the girl hopped and hooped and hurrah'd, as she could tell that both she and Sonic would be wonderful friends, and that he could tell from the warmth of his heart inside his chest that he truly loved her even though they just met, and that miss Annabelle Wayne finally had a friend who could comfort her for being in the hospital, with her heart so broken and torn, and that maybe it wouldn't be so bad now about her recent "meltdown" that caused her to be sent to the SR and having her away from her parents for three months.
Sometimes, she thought, maybe she didn't care at all about her parents. They always seemed to be so extravagant, so snobbish, ever since she's known them. She wanted to go to the fine and fancy places her parents claimed they were going, but she always had to be taken care of by the maids and nannies, because her heart wasn't in the right place. The surgeries were just performed and the vacation would be too much excitement, and they would leave her behind, and she would be like a dog who misses their owners when they just leave to go to the store, always barking and scratching at the door, wishing they would return. Her nannies were just as cold as her parents, always telling her her fantasies were just make-believe, not at all real, and they would dispense the medication like Pez dispensers, the little sugary pills coming from their necks, hoping she will take them like candy so she can go to sleep.